Researchers grow cyberforests to predict climate change

New York: In a bid to know how climate change can affect forests in the future, a team of US researchers have created a computer-simulation 3D model to understand the impact of climatic conditions on forests.

"We call our model “LES”, after the Russian word for forest, it is a tool that forest managers can use to create 3D representations of their own forests and simulate what will happen to them in the future," said Nikolay Strigul from Washington State University Vancouver in the US.

Climate change is leading to more frequent drought, warmer weather and other varying natural conditions. It is difficult to determine how forest would recover from change in dynamic disturbances like wildfires or clear-cutting.

The team planned to use LES to help forest managers determine which species of trees and other ecological factors are necessary for forests to re-establish themselves after being destroyed by wildfires and other disturbances.

LES uses recent advances in computing power to grow 100×100-metre stands of drought and shade tolerant trees that can then be scaled up to actual forest size in three weeks.