Morphometric Relationships as Indicative of Silvicultural Interventions for Brazilian Pine in Southern Brazil

Silvicultural interventions are necessary to control the competition and to maintain the forest structure. Thus, this work aimed to know the interactions between dendro/morphometric variables to indicate density interventions in Brazilian pine Forest. Dendrometric and morphometric variables were measured from 186 individual trees of this species, which were distributed in diametric classes at three sites. With the variables were fitted models for the relationships between the degree of slenderness and the potential crown diameter as a function of the number of trees per hectare. The fit indicated that the variables showed interaction and the relationship can be described by linear function explaining between 51.9 and 99.3% of the variance between morphometry and forest density. This adjustment and information can be used to indicate the optimum density according to the amplitude of each index. The results show that the morphometric indexes and their interaction indicate the period of the interventions, having relation with the characteristics of the site, the diametric structure and the dynamics of the forest growth.