Forest Eco-Units

Abstract

The formal definition of different kinds of eco-units is not so easy as it appears in a forest scale-drawing (cf. Sect. 5.4). Oldeman (1983b, p. 176) defined an eco-unit as follows: ``.. the unit of vegetation which started its development at the same moment and on the same surface.'' He gave as examples a patch of forest growing in a gap, a Pinus caribaea stand, or a corn field, and mentioned the possibility of using analysis of populations of eco-units of the same kind, i.e. within one size range, at different ages but each with the same structural and functional sequential build-up.