Development and Validation of Height-Diameter Models for Cupressus lusitanica in Gergeda Forest, Ethiopia

This study was conducted to fit and evaluate ten existing nonlinear height diameter functions for Cupressus lusitanica in Gergeda forest Ethiopia. A total of 260 trees were measured for their diameter at breast height (D) and height using destructive sampling methods. This data were randomly split in to two datasets for model development (50%) and for model validation (50%). Considering hetroscadasticity of variance, all functions were fitted using weighted nonlinear least square regression. To evaluate the performance of each model, five fit statistics-such as Coefficient of determination (R-2), root mean square error (RMSE), bias ((E) over bar), absolute mean deviation (AMD), and coefficient of variation (CV%) were used. Among all the models tested, the Weibull type function of the form H = 1.3+a (1-exp (-bD(c))) + epsilon was observed to give the best fit based on the model's goodness of fit and predictive ability. Therefore, this model with three parameters has been conformed to provide reliable estimate of total tree height for Cupressus lusitanica in Gergeda forest, Ethiopia.