We are happy to announce the release of a new iLand version (0.8). Its main feature is the inclusion of a dynamic fire disturbance module. The model software (including a ready-to-run example and the full source code) are available at the download page.

The release follows our recent publication in Ecological Applications on the role of disturbance legacies. The paper presents an application of iLand at the HJ Andrews experimental forest in Orgeon, US. In the study we ran long-term simulations (with the new fire module engaged) starting from different legacy levels after a landscape level disturbance, and analyzed the simulated successional patterns over 500 years. We found that life tree legacies have not only an effect on the long-term trajectories of ecosystem carbon storage, but also on species composition and structure. More details can be found in this and this blog post. The development and testing of the iLand wildfire module - which was a prerequisite for conducting this study - is described in detail in two Appendices of the paper (and of course in the iLand wiki).

In fact the development of the iLand fire module actually started already 2011 (see, for example, this blog post), illustrating nicely that the cycle of model development, model application, paper writing, and paper publication can take quite a long time.

But there is more than the new fire module in this release. Most notably, iLand now also includes a command-line version (without a graphical user interface), making it a perfect tool for High-Performance-Computing environments (note that the download package contains only windows binaries though). In addition, many small fixes and additions made it into this release (e.g., more detailed database outputs, extended Javascript bindings for forest management, improved stability due to bugfixes, ...).

With this release the number of available disturbance modules effectively doubled (now being two). Since we, of course, are aware that three shall be the number, we are currently working on also bringing bark beetles into iLand. So stay tuned!