Potentials and limitations of using large-scale forest inventory data for evaluating forest succession models

Forest gap models have been applied widely to examine forest development under natural conditions and to investigate the effect of climate change on forest succession. Due to the complexity and parameter requirements of such models a rigorous evaluation is required to build confidence in the simulation results. However, appropriate data for model assessment are scarce at the large spatial and temporal scales of successional dynamics. In this study, we explore a data source for the evaluation of forest gap models that has been used only little in the past, i.e., large-scale National Forest Inventory data. The key objectives of this study were (a) to examine the potentials and limitations of using large-scale forest inventory data for evaluating the performance of forest gap models and (b) to test two particular models as case studies to derive recommendations for their future improvement.