What Data Will I Need?

Required LANDIS-II data can be broken into three basic data types: species data, ecoregion data, and initialization data.

Species data include the species life history attributes and species establishment probabilities. Life history attributes can be found in the literature and in the North American Silvic manual. They can also be determined from expert knowledge of the landscape of interest. Species establishment probabilities - the probability of survival after successful germination - are needed for each species and ecoregion combination. These can be estimated from expert knowledge, inventory data (how frequent is a species on each ecoregion?), or from multi-modeling (using a separate model to calculate species establishment probabilities).

Ecoregion definitions are highly dependent upon the landscape and the research or management question. In the midwest, ecoregions are often defined very broadly because of the low topography. Ecoregions are often defined using available landtype definitions: USDA Forest Service sub-sections, HUC, STATSGO polygons, etc. The extent of ecoregions also depends on the process of interest. If fine-scale fire behavior is being simulated, fine-scale ecoregions will be desirable.

Initialization data are the species and ages found on your landscape at the first time step. These data are often the most difficult and expensive to create. And again, the difficulty of creating these data will be dependent upon the data available. In the U.S., Forest Inventory and Analysis data is often summarized by ecoregion and cross-tabulated with satellite classification data. In some areas, more detailed stand cruise data is available for initialization. In general, the fewer species and the more even-aged the forest, the easier initialization will be. Boreal forests are easier, southern hardwoods more difficult.