Computing biomass for species not present in equations database

[SebastianKyle]

I tried the get_biomass method of the package with some species that are not present in the equations database like 'Gordonia lasianthus' and it still return the corresponding biomass:

get_biomass(

• dbh = 23.5,
  

• genus = "Gordonia",
  

• species = "lasianthus",
  

• coords = c(29.6893, -81.9947)
  

• )
  [1] 388.0618
  I also tried with other absent species like 'Lyonia lucida', 'Persea palustris', ... and it worked everytime.
  So how does this function work to compute biomass for these absent species ? Is the result applicable ?

[teixeirak]

Hi @SebastianKyle ,

The package does not verify whether the species is within range at a given location. If there is no species-specific equation available (which of course there wouldn't be for out-of-range species), it will draw on equations for related species or generic equations for the region, weighting as described in our paper.

While we did our best to design allodb to provide the most reasonable estimate possible for a given species/location, it is of course subject to the limitations of the equations upon which it draws -- if there are no reasonable equations for a given species/location combination, you should not expect a reasonable estimate.

I hope that adequately answers your question. Good luck!