The Self-Thinning Surface

摘要

This article introduces a generalized expression of the self-thinning rule, B = KS~αN~β, where B is stand biomas per unit area, N is stand density, S is relative site index, and K, α　and β are parameters. On log scales, this equation becomes a self-thinning surface that defines a density - dependent upper frontier of stand biomass over a gradient of site productivity for a given species. This equation is formulated for parameter estimation as a stochastic frontier function with two error components that have different distributional properties.