Drought risk assessment as changes in the potential stand yield classes and potential forest production for Sitka spruce, Scots pine, and pedunculate oak over the next 80 years in the Great Britain

Probabilistic climate data have become available for the first time through the UK Climate Projections 2009, so that the risk of tree growth change can be quantified. We assess the drought risk spatially and temporally using drought probabilities and tree species vulnerabilities across Britain. We assessed the drought impact on the potential yield class of three major tree species (Picea sitchensis, Pinus sylvestris, and Quercus robur) which presently cover around 59% (400,700 ha) of state-managed forests, across lowland and upland sites. Here we show that drought impacts result mostly in reduced tree growth over the next 80 years when using b1, a1b and a1fi IPCC emissions scenarios. We found a maximum reduction of 94% but also a maximum increase of 56% in potential stand yield class in the 2080s from the baseline climate (1961-1990). Furthermore, potential production over the national forest estate for all three species in the 2080s may decrease due to drought by 42% in the lowlands and 32% in the uplands in comparison to the baseline climate. Our results reveal that potential tree growth and forest production on the national forest estate in Britain is likely to reduce, and indicate where and when adaptation measures are required. Moreover, this paper demonstrates the value of probabilistic climate projections for an important economic and environmental sector.

Improving the compilation of prolog to C using moded types and determinism information

We describe the current status of and provide performance results for a prototype compiler of Prolog to C, ciaocc. ciaocc is novel in that it is designed to accept different kinds of high-level information, typically obtained via an automatic analysis of the initial Prolog program and expressed in a standardized language of assertions. This information is used to optimize the resulting C code, which is then processed by an off-the-shelf C compiler. The basic translation process essentially mimics the unfolding of a bytecode emulator with respect to the particular bytecode corresponding to the Prolog program. This is facilitated by a flexible design of the instructions and their lower-level components. This approach allows reusing a sizable amount of the machinery of the bytecode emulator: predicates already written in C, data definitions, memory management routines and áreas, etc., as well as mixing emulated bytecode with native code in a relatively straightforward way. We report on the performance of programs compiled by the current versión of the system, both with and without analysis information.