Researchers grow cyberforests to predict climate change

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It can take Mother Nature 1,000 years to grow a forest. But Nikolay Strigul, assistant professor of mathematics and statistics at Washington State University Vancouver, can grow one on a computer in three weeks.

He and Jean Lienard, a mathematics postdoctoral researcher, created the first computer simulation that grows realistic forests down to the branches, leaves and roots of individual trees. They are using the simulation, detailed in a new paper in Royal Society Open Science, to determine how drought, warmer weather, more frequent wildfires and other climate-related changes will affect forests across North America.
They have already used the computer model to predict increases in fire rates and plant growth in Quebec hardwood forests due to rising CO2 levels and warmer temperatures.
"We call our model LES after the Russian word for forest," said Strigul, who grew up in Russia and came to the U.S. In 2001. "It is a tool that forest managers can use to create 3D representations of their own forests and simulate what will happen to them in the future."