Aproksymacja rozkładów pierśnic w dwugeneracyjnych drzewostanach za pomocą rozkładów mieszanych. I. Estymacja parametrów

Study assessed the usefulness of various methods for choosing the initial values for the numerical procedures for estimating the parameters of mixture distributions and analysed variety of mixture models to approximate empirical diameter at breast height (dbh) distributions. Two−component mixtures of either the Weibull distribution or the gamma distribution were employed. The study plots, representing two−cohort stands, were located in the Świętokrzyski National Park (central Poland) and in the Southern Appalachian Mountains (eastern USA). A new strategy using three methods for choosing initial values (min.k/max.k for k=1, 5, 10; 0,5/1,5/mean; wp) for maximizing the likelihood during parameter estimation for mixture models for small and large plots is proposed.