Forecasting Colloquium - Heike Puhlmann

Water budget model projections: creating data products for forest practice and administration

The water budget is a crucial site factor for forest health, which has so far been assessed by (static) maps from forest soil surveys. In the course of climate change, however, it can be assumed that the existing static methods of forest soil surveys will reach their limits when it comes to realistically reflecting the increasing dynamics of acute drought stress as well as long-term changes in the water availability for plants. In the lecture, models of the site water balance for different research plots are presented and the applicability of the models to unobserved areas is discussed. The discrepancy between the model uncertainty (especially due to model parameter values that are not or only vaguely known) and the expectation of accurate and precise predictions on the part of forestry practice is critically discussed.