Understanding Diversity in Forest Ecosystem

This project aims at understanding the diversity of forest ecosystem by modelling and simulating forest ecosystems. This project proposes to exploit new computational methods for both inverse estimation and forward simulation to evaluate the efficacy of diversity mechanisms in natural systems. Inverse estimation makes use of hierarchical Bayes models tructures to test assumptions of diversity mechanisms. Forward simulation methods will be used to test predictions of diversity mechanisms. Since the underlying models are spatial and individual based, straight-forward simulation is too slow. We use hierarchical data structures and approximation algorithms to simulate the model efficiently. This project is an inderdisiplinary effort involving the department of biology and computer science.