South Africa has very few long-term, intensively monitored experiments in managed forest environments. Just such an experiment has been implemented as part of the Hans Merensky Chair in Advanced Modelling of Growth and Wood Formation in Eucalypts (EucXylo) at Stellenbosch University. This new experiment, called the IMPACT Open-Air Laboratory (OAL), is located at Somerset West in the Western Cape of South Africa. The experiment focusses on the world’s most widely planted hardwoods: the fascinating genus Eucalyptus, some species of which are the largest flowering plants in the world!  See https://eucxylo.sun.ac.za/open-air-lab/ for more information. The focus of this new experimental facility and associated research program is the intensive monitoring of growth and ecophysiology of several eucalypt species experiencing varied levels of between-tree competition. A wide range of sensing equipment are or will be installed at the site, including dendrometers, sap flow sensors and environmental sensors such as soil water probes. The experiment also makes extensive use of remote sensing systems. These systems are implemented across all plots in three replications on an 11-ha site.  

This post-doctoral fellowship (PDF) will harness the large amount of data generated from this site, as well as other datasets from prior projects in the EucXylo program and other research programs. The over-arching objective of the PDF will be to develop a new modelling framework, implemented as open-source software, that can be applied to simulate daily individual tree growth. The model must allow individual tree growth to be simulated in a stand context to take into account tree-tree interactions at the IMPACT OAL and in eucalypt plantations in general. Adjustment to a range of existing models (see e.g. models like SurEau; Cochard et al. 2021)  will provide an excellent starting point for the work, but development of new models is likely to be needed.