Statistical modelling of height growth in urban forestry plantations

ABSTRACT

Urban plantation dynamics in different topographical and climatic conditions in Odisha were evaluated using linear model selection and regularisation techniques. The main objective was to evaluate how and to what extent the urban plantations respond to various climatic and edaphic conditions. The relationship between vegetation growth and climatic and soil parameters was studied using four statistical learning tools, subset selection, ridge regression, lasso, and partial least squares regression, and their performance was compared to a multiple regression model. The test MSE for the subset selection, ridge regression, lasso, and partial least squares regression models was evaluated to be 16,261.54, 12245.11, 16263.79 and 14,317.21, respectively. Results proved that statistical learning methods, namely subset selection, lasso, ridge regressions and partial least squares regression, were more accurate than multiple linear regression. From the results, it can be safely concluded that temperature shows greater correlation with the growth parameters. Precipitation also plays a vital role in vegetation dynamics. Soil parameters indicate a positive correlation with that of the growth.

KEYWORDS:

• subset selection
• ridge regression
• lasso
• partial least squares regression
• urban forestry modelling

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data and the code in R underlying this article will be shared on reasonable request to the corresponding author.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the MINISTRY OF ENVIRONMENT FOREST AND CLIMATE CHANGE, GOVERNMENT OF INDIA [18757/30102019].

Notes on contributors

Swayam Mallick

Swayam Mallick is a member of the Indian Forest Service, currently working as the Conservator of Forests and State Silviculturist in the Department of Forests, Environment and Climate Change under Government of Odisha. His research interests include forest economics, climate change and carbon capture.

Akshya Pattanaik

Akshaya Pattanaik is a member of the India Forest Service currently working as the Chief Conservator of Forests (Training and Development) in the Department of Forest, Environment and Climate Change under Government of Odisha. He has more than 30 years of experience in implementing solutions for sustainable forest management.