Over the past several weeks a lot has been accomplished on our forest modeling project. We are still working on getting the Black Box version of SimForest to function, but Glass box is working perfectly. I have constructed a species table that is representative of Zoar Valley and some of its local conditions (such as the water table depth). Parameters such as average rainfall per month and temperature are still being decided upon. To test future conditions and affects on forest composition, rainfall and temperature will be adjusted several times, so this is taking additional research and consideration. My literature searches are ongoing to find information about our parameters and environmental variables we need to change and adjust to raise the predictive power of our models.
We have presented our research so far at QUEST, which is a conference put on by YSU for student research. I was responsible for the research site introduction and for an explanation of how we were going to use existing and published data sources to model forest composition. Next week on the 17th, I will be presenting a poster of our research at YSU’s Biology Days departmental conference.

~ Erin K. Pfeil