Abstract

MELENDEZ-SOTO, Arnulfo et al. Comparison of stand techniques in forest masses of the Sierra Madre Occidental in Durango State. Rev. mex. de cienc. forestales [online]. 2017, vol.8, n.41, pp.56-81. ISSN 2007-1132.

The management units established in the management plans, according to the guidelines established in Mexican Official Standard NOM-152-SEMARNAT-2006, are the stands and the subcompartments. Currently, the method most commonly used to stratify the forest is based on photointerpretation, which involves a high degree of discretion that affects the estimates of parameters that depend mostly on the stand area, such as growing stock, basal area, among others. In order to contribute to sustainable forest management, it is necessary to maintain the same delimitation of the management units, in particular of the stands, unifying the technical criteria to guarantee its adequate monitoring. This work had the goal of comparing two stand delimitation techniques: i) the traditional method, based on photointerpretation, and ii) a new method developed in this study, derived by means of a semi-automated technique based on a geomorphometric analysis of watersheds generated from three Digital Elevation Models (Inegi, ASTER y SRTM), using procedures of Geographic Information Systems (SIG), mostly the ArcGIS 10.0 software. Data of 51 forest properties located in the Sierra Madre Occidental of the state of Durango were used. The results of the statistical comparison among the mean values of the elevation, slope and exposure variables obtained by the photointerpretation method and those generated by the semi-automated technique did not show significant differences in the exposure variable (p> 0.05), while for the elevation and slope variables the differences were statistically significant (p <0.01). Study findings concluded that the stands generated by means of the semi-automated technique allows the generation of homogenous stands in terms of the characteristics of elevation, slope and aspect.

Keywords : Morphometric analysis; zonal statistics; photointerpretation; mass trees; Digital Elevation Model (DEM); stand.