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The BIOPAK software system for calculating plant components
Author(s) -
Means Joseph E.
Publication year - 1995
Publication title -
journal of vegetation science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.1
H-Index - 115
eISSN - 1654-1103
pISSN - 1100-9233
DOI - 10.2307/3236359
Subject(s) - software , ecology , computer science , geography , biology , programming language
BIOPAK is a software package for the PC that provides flexibility for linking plant measurements to a library of documented equations, that estimate plant components, e.g. leaf mass, leaf area, stem wood mass, bark mass, fuel size classes. It can be used, for example. to estimate browse or leaf area for wildlife, live fuels for fuels appraisal, biomass components for studies of plant resource allocation, and leaf area for plant process studies. It is menu-driven and includes on-line help. BIOPAK requires a library of equations that can be used to predict the desired plant components and a vegetation data set containing the plant measurements required by the equations. The user must supply the vegetation dataset of interest. BIOPAK includes a library of over 1100 prediction equations and an editor for updating it. Most of the equations in the library were developed in the Pacific Northwest of North America, including Southeast Alaska. northern Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevada Mountains. This library includes equations from biomes ranging from temperate rainforest to desert. The Equation Library Editor can be used to build equation libraries for other biomes and regions of the world using existing equations for those areas. For a given species and plant component. the program can choose equations from those contained in an equation library using built-in assumptions based primarily on comparisons of plant dimensions, geographic area sampled and seral stage sampled for input data and prediction equations. Alternatively, a user can direct the program to search a specific subset of the equation library or use a particular equation for particular input data. In this way, equations from other species may be used for species for which equations are unavailable. BIOPAK produces reports formatted for people and machine-readable files for use in graphics, statistics and database programs. Other reports document the design of a computation run and the equations used. Estimating fuel size classes for live shrubs and herbs