FIRST TYPOLOGY OF OAK AND SCOTS PINE MIXED STANDS IN ORLÉANS FOREST (FRANCE), BASED ON THE CANOPY SPATIAL STRUCTURE*

Abstract

In recent years there has been growing interest in uneven-aged or mixed forest stands as a result of new demands of society and of changing forestry practices. Unfortunately, due to their complexity, the dynamics of these stands are more difficult to understand than those of pure and even-aged stands. Thus, new research questions have arisen in terms of stand description, stand dynamics, and growth modelling. The first step toward better management of such mixed or uneven-aged stands is to describe them precisely — this step corresponds to a classical typological approach. As spatial structure plays a key role in the dynamics of such stands, spatial structure analysis can be used to infer certain types of information based on the biological processes involved in the growth and the dynamics of heterogeneous stands, and thus to build a typology.