Fig. 3

Simulated biomass development and stem size distribution for ravine forest. a Simulated biomass succession over time for the different species groups: pioneers (green), intermediate (blue), understorey (orange) and climax (red). The closed coloured dots represent the field data used for calibration. The black open dot shows the independent validation data from forest inventory plots including all tree groups (Werner and Homeier 2015). The light colours represent the variation between simulation runs (standard deviation for 10 simulation runs of 1 ha). The two graphs below show the stem size distributions for 10 simulation runs of 1 ha for a young forest (b, simulation year 50) and an old-growth forest (c, simulation year 950) and exemplary visualisations (only trees larger 10 cm dbh). The closed black dots represent the field data used for calibration