INVESTIGATIONS ON THE CORRELATION PATTERN IN EVEN-AGED STANDS OF LARCH .4. RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN NEIGHBORHOOD CORRELATIONS AND MEANS OF DIFFERENT ENTRIES

For a dynamic description of spatial neighbourhood correlation pattern s of stands of larch and an analysis of temporal changes and time tren ds of such patterns during stand development extensive: data sets from a field trial (trial no. 1) with 27 entries of Larix decidua MILL. (L arix europaea DC.), Larix kaempferi (LAMB.) CARR. (Larix leptolepis (S IEB. et Zucc.) SIEB. ex GORD.), and Larix x eurolepis HENRY have been used. Single tree measurements of this trial were available for 7 stag es of stand development (ages: 11, 13, 18, 19, 42, 49 and 50 years). A dditionally, for a static description of spatial neighbourhood correla tion patterns of stands of larch extensive data sets from 9 field tria ls (trials nos. 2 to 10) with a varying number (8 to 23) of entries ha ve been used which provide an analysis of the correlations between nei ghbours at only one point in time. These trials are slightly different in their ages (7 to II years). Single tree measurements for all 10 tr ials were available for the traits height and diameter at breast heigh t (for the 2 ages 42 and 49 of trial no. 1 only diameter measurements were available). Additionally, the diameter values are transformed and analysed as individual basal areas. The correlative structure for mea surements of neighbouring individuals for these trials with regular sq uare spacings (5 m x 5 m for trial no. 1 and 1.5 m x 1.5 m for trials nos. 2 to 10) has been described by 12 different correlation coefficie nts. These coefficients are defined by considering quite different spa tial configurations of competitive neighbourhoods. In these procedures and analyses the diagonally located neighbours of a subject tree and its missing neighbours too are explicitly considered. The question of this paper is: Are there any relationships between means and spatial n eighbourhood correlations for the different entries? Relationships val id for all traits, for all trials and for all ages = stages of stand d evelopment have not been observed for this plant material. Some intere sting special results were obtained - for example: 1. For the dynamic description during stand development of trial no. 1, relationships amo ng the yields of competing neighbours are independent on the yield lev el. With regard to the amount of the rank correlations (positive or ne gative) between means and spatial neighbourhood correlations for most cases one obtains: {height} greater than or equal to (diameter) congru ent to (individual basal area). 2. For the static description of the t rials nos. 2 to 10 (each with only 1 measurement) the results strongly depend on the individual trial.