CFE: Measurement, Models and Analysis

(15-16 August 2005, Cairns, Queensland, Australia)

Forests are important as a very large renewable economic resource and as a major component of the environment in which we live.  Forests are a major repository of biodiversity resources, and play a crucial role in carbon sequestration in the context of the greenhouse effect and climate change.  Economic needs of countries in the developing world are leading to mass clearance of tropical forests both in Amazonia and South-East Asia, with massive potential losses in biodiversity resources, and negative impacts on the global carbon balance. Sustainability is the "in-word" in forestry the developed forestry nations.  Does it have any meaning in the context of short rotation monoculture cash crops in the tropics?

Understanding the forest ecosystem through models is an important component to the scientific approach to sustainable management of forests for a diverse range of forests products. Are our models good enough?

Data is essential for any model building, including models of complex forest ecosystems. But what is the best data to collect for such modelling?  How can the analysis of remotely sensed imagery be integrated into the modelling of forests?

Abundance distributions and diversity measures.  Weren't these all sorted out by the greats 50 years ago.  What is the present state of the art?

Spatial analysis of the simultaneous distribution of 1000 species.  How should it be done?  Certainly we will have to go beyond Ripley's K-function. Does the theory need to be taken further? How do we take into account know spatial heterogeneity, such topography?  Baddeley et al. Statistica Neerlandica (2000) ?  Do we have the computational tools. In R? Why not?

What happened to the Forest Model Archive idea? Is there still any thing that can be done to make the idea a reality?