2008 Research Highlights
Inexpensive Methods Estimate Diverse Canopy Density
The density of tree canopies is accepted as being highly correlated to leaf area index (LAI) and is very important information when assessing the health of forest ecosystems. Canopy density and LAI are estimates of the leaf surface areas available for photosynthesis and, coupled with actual growth measurements, provides a key piece of ecosystem information known as growth efficiency. Growth efficiency indicates whether trees are sequestering carbon at maximum rates possible for a given site.
Historically measurements of canopy density or LAI were time-consuming and expensive, or used methods with low accuracy and most importantly for long-term monitoring, low precision. Researchers working with the Eastern Forest Environmental Threat Assessment Center developed measurement methods, including modifications of existing inexpensive, hand-held densiometers, coupled with protocols standardized for Forest Inventory and Analysis/Forest Health Monitoring plots or used in any field situations such as surveys, line-transects, etc. The methods were tested with foresters in Indonesia in the mid-1990s and with 24 North Carolina State University students in 2007. These methods have also been used in urban forest assessments and are currently being used in assessments of forests in the Florida panhandle and exotic plant surveys.
This methodology is important to scientists and land managers because canopy density measurements are widely used in wildlife habitat studies, urban forestry, understory diversity, and a host of other ecological investigations.
Contact: Ken Stolte, research ecologist, (919) 549-4022, kstolte@fs.fed.us
Partners: North Carolina State University
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Photo by Wendy VanDyk Evans, www.bugwood.org
