Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS
Given the environmental changes and numerous biotic and abiotic damages, forests and trees require stabilization. How healthy trees are, how they can adapt to stress, and how they develop in the long term under environmental changes largely depends on their individual history.
So far, tree growth, vitality, and resilience have been primarily assessed based on age and size or mass. Other factors, such as internal structure or external crown characteristics, have largely been overlooked in evaluating growth potential, vitality, and resistance.
The aim of the project is to gain improved insights into the relationship between the internal structure and external crown characteristics of trees and the growth potential, vitality, and adaptability that are essential for their contribution to climate stability.
Such insights and knowledge are important, for example, for the selection and appropriate treatment of trees regarding their climate stability, for the selection of trees when converting even-aged pure stands into mixed stands, during the establishment and mixing of areas, and for monitoring climate stability. The project aims to develop indicators for selecting particularly suitable or unsuitable trees and measures for their treatment.
The project involves close collaboration between the Chair of Forest Growth Science as part of the Weihenstephan Science Center at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and the Development Center for X-ray Technology at Fraunhofer IIS.
