Applying GreenLab Model to Adult Chinese Pine Trees with Topology Simplification

Abstract

This paper applied the functional structural model GreenLab to adult Chinese pine trees (pinus tabulaeformis Carr.). Basic hypotheses of the model were validated such as constant allometry rules, relative sink relationships and topology simplification. To overcome the limitations raised by the complexity of tree structure for collecting experimental data, a simplified pattern of tree description was introduced and compared with the complete pattern for the computational time and the parameter accuracy. The results showed that this simplified pattern was well adapted to fit adult trees with GreenLab.