Using forest eco-system monitoring data to model tree survival for investigating climate change effects

Nicole Augustin (University of Bath)

Friday 18th May, 2018 15:00-16:00 Maths 311B

Abstract

Forests are economically, recreationally and ecologically important, providing timber and wildlife habitat and acting as a carbon sink, among many ecosystem services. They are therefore extremely valuable to society, and it is crucial to ensure that they remain healthy. Forest health is monitored in Europe by The International Co-operative Programme on Assessment and Monitoring of Air Pollution Effects (ICP Forests) in cooperation with the European Union. More recently climate change has contributed to the decline in forest health and these data are increasingly being used to investigate the effects of climate change on forests in order to decide on forest management strategies for mitigation.

Here we model extensive yearly data on tree mortality and crown defoliation, an indicator of tree health, from a monitoring survey carried out in Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany since 1983, which includes a part of the ICP transnational grid. On a changing irregular grid, defoliation, mortality and other tree and site specific variables are recorded. In some cases the grid locations are no longer observed which leads to censored data, also recruitment of trees happens throughout when new grid points are added.
We model tree survival as a function of the predictor variables on climate, soil characteristics and deposition. We are interested in the process leading to tree mortality rather than prediction and this requires the inclusion of all potential drivers of tree mortality in the model. We use the semiparametric shared frailty model fitted using a Cox regression model which allows for random effects (frailties) taking care of dependence between neighbouring trees and non-linear smooth functions of time varying predictors and functional predictors. At each of 2385 locations 24 trees were observed between 1983 and 2016, with not all locations being observed yearly. Altogether a total of 80000 trees are observed making the analysis computationally challenging.

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