Understanding and Modeling Forest Disturbance Interactions at the Landscape Level

Disturbances, both natural and anthropogenic, affect the configuration, composition, and function of forested ecosystems. Complex system behaviors emerge from the interactions between disturbance regimes, the vegetation response to those disturbances, and their interplay with multiple drivers (climate, topography, land use, etc.) across spatial and temporal scales. Here, we summarize conceptual advances and empirical approaches to disturbance interaction investigation, and used those insights to evaluate and categorize 146 landscape modeling studies emerging from a systematic review of the literature published since 2010. Recent conceptual advances include formal disaggregation of disturbances into their constituent components, embedding disturbance processes into system dynamics, and clarifying terminology for interaction factors, types, and ecosystem responses. Empirical studies investigating disturbance interactions now span a wide range of approaches, including (most recently) advanced statistical methods applied to an expanding set of spatial and temporal datasets. Concurrent development in spatially-explicit landscape models, informed by these empirical insights, integrate the interactions among natural and anthropogenic disturbances by coupling these processes to account for disturbance stochasticity, disturbance within and across scales, and non-linear landscape responses to climate change. Still, trade-offs between model elegance and complexity remain. We developed an index for the degree of process integration (i.e., balance of static vs. dynamic components) within a given disturbance agent and applied it to the studies from our systematic review. Contemporary model applications in this line of research have applied a wide range process integration, depending on the specific question, but also limited in part by data and knowledge. Non-linear “threshold” behavior and cross-scaled interactions remain a frontier in temperate, boreal, and alpine regions of North America and Europe, while even simplistic studies are lacking from other regions of the globe (e.g., subtropical and tropical biomes). Understanding and planning for uncertainty in system behavior—including disturbance interactions—is paramount at a time of accelerated anthropogenic change. While progress in landscape modeling studies in this area is evident, work remains to increase model transparency and confidence, especially for understudied regions and processes. Moving forward, a multi-dimensional approach is recommended to address the uncertainties of complex human-ecological dynamics.

Large-Scale Modeling of Solum Thickness Based on the Local Topographic Attributes of Ground and Bedrock Surfaces

This study was aimed to address the importance of neighborhood scale and using bedrock topography in the soil-landscape modeling in a low-relief large region. For this study, local topographic attributes (slopes and curvatures) of the ground surface (DTM) and bedrock surface (DBM) were derived at five different neighborhood sizes (3×3, 9×9, 15×15, 21×21, and 27×27). Afterward, the topographic attributes were used for multivariate adaptive regression splines (MARS) modeling of solum thickness. The results demonstrate that there are statistical differences among DTM and DBM morphometric variables and their correlation to solum thickness. The MARS analyses revealed that the neighborhood scale could remarkably affect the soil–landscape modeling. We developed a powerful MARS model for predicting soil thickness relying on the multi-scale geomorphometric analysis (R2= 83%; RMSE= 12.70 cm). The MARS fitted model based on DBM topographic attributes calculated at a neighborhood scale of 9×9 has the highest accuracy in the prediction of solum thickness compared to other DBM models (R2 = 61%; RMSE = 19cm). This study suggests that bedrock topography can be potentially utilized in soil-related research, but this idea still needs further investigations.

DTM to NURBS—A Parametric Approach to Landscape Modeling for an Environmentally-Conscious Design

This research aims to develop a methodology for geometric analysis of the territory, which, by means of a specially designed digital tool, allows quantitative assessments useful for drawing up sustainability policies. The difficulty of working with this type of procedure is the sectorialisation of technical skills among those who deal with design at the architectural scale and those who work at territorial scale. The undertaken methodology establishes a workflow that can export data from a GIS tool and import it into a three-dimensional modeler. To do this you need an intermediate tool, a parametric software. The explained procedure aims to have maximum freedom of model geometries processing. Therefore, it has been based on Nurbs mathematical models. The application tested with this is the solar radiation analysis in the territory of Ortona, Italy, on the Adriatic coast. Starting from the cartographic data of the Abruzzo Region, the three-dimensional model has been developed and it has built a base for further analysis. This working methodology ensures efficient results with a low amount of human iteration to generate the final model. Some of the procedure’s limitations have been explained in detail, mainly due to the structure of the used components.