In June 2017, I went to the Heishiding Reserve in Zhaoqing, Guangdong, and saw the forest plot of Sun Yat-sen University for the first time. BlackStone is the meaning of Heishiding in Chinese.
I was astonished by the contrasting differences of the forest plot in the field and from lab presentations. After I went back to Guangzhou, I emailed to my advisor Prof. He about this visit and my feelings.
Prof. He replied that “When you were standing in the field, you may not see any “patterns” or “rules” or “science”. They are so subject to where you stand and what you look at. Only those who have a well-prepared mind can see the “picture” in the field.” . His reply inspired me to simulate the Heishiding forest plot on the computer, just like a game. In the summer of 2019, I attempted to let this idea come true. Check C# code here.
I used Unity to construct the 3D plant community based on the Heishiding plot census data. The terrain heightmap was generated by the Kriging interpolation method.
The data used in this video is the first 1000 plants in the Heishiding forest plot. The Heishiding site has been censused twice. The first census was completed in 2013, and the second one was completed in 2017. I can switch the data in this simulation so we can compare the differences between these census data.
The second video is the visualizationof Morris’s Persimmon (Diospyros morrisiana) female and male trees distribution in Heishiding plot. The female trees are orange, and the male trees are blue.