Modelling of population dynamics of forest data from national inventories
The idea for this package arose from the need to calculate population dynamics of Spanish forests with the help of the Inventorio Nacional Forestal de España (hereafter, IFN; https://www.miteco.gob.es/es/biodiversidad/temas/inventarios-nacionales/inventario-forestal-nacional.html), which aims at evaluating the health and structure of the Spanish forests in a systematic way. The IFN represents a major effort to survey those forests regularly at an extensive collection of permanent tree plots. By recording a broad and comprehensive set of plant and soil parameters at those plots, environmental managers and scientists can quantify things like total amount of live or dead wood, the rate of carbon sequestration or the spread of deforestation caused by insects or fires, for example.
This package provide users with the tools to calculate projections of the population dynamics of Spanish forests in future scenarios. The methodology employed for those projections is the so-called Integral Projection Model (IPM; see e.g. Easterling, M. R., Ellner, S. P., & Dixon, P. M. (2000). Size‐specific sensitivity: applying a new structured population model. Ecology, 81(3), 694-708), although some modifications have been introduced to adapt the IPM techniques to the singularities of the IFN.