Working backwards from age 100: a 2010 growth model for Balkan pine
In 2010 two Sofia foresters turned 1962 yield tables into a growth model for Macedonian pine, a Balkan endemic whose largest stands grow in Rila and Pirin. The OpenAlex bibliographic database lists this record as the paper’s landing page.
What the study did and found
The paper, “Growth model for Macedonian pine (Pinus peuce Griseb.) stands in Bulgaria”, appeared in Silva Balcanica in 2010 (Mihov & Tonchev, 2010). Ivan Mihov and Toma Tonchev of the University of Forestry in Sofia applied the Bulgarian ’Analysis of a stand’ method, which reconstructs a stand’s past growth from its values at about 100 years, to yield tables published in 1962.
The result is a set of linear equations for mean height, top height, mean diameter, basal area and stem volume on five site indices; on the average curve a stand holds 14% of its age-100 volume at 20 years and about 53% at 50 (Mihov & Tonchev, 2010).
Why it is cited
The referring page is the OpenAlex record of the article, a bibliographic database entry that gives this Cabdirect page as the work’s only landing page and says nothing about the results.
That use matches the work, because the record simply points readers to it.
The model reworks tables from 1962 rather than new measurements, the paper reports no fit statistics or validation, and its printed coefficient tables appear inconsistent (Mihov & Tonchev, 2010).
Later Bulgarian research includes dynamic models tested on permanent plots, such as a 2016 whole-stand model for Scots pine plantations (Stankova, 2016), and a 2023 study compared 40 height–diameter models for Macedonian pine on 48 plots in North Macedonia (Tanovski et al., 2023).
The topic today
Macedonian pine is Near Threatened globally and Vulnerable in the EU28 (Rivers et al., 2019), and Bulgaria holds just over 14,000 ha. Tree-ring studies in Pirin link its growth to winter cold (Zafirov et al., 2020), and Bulgaria’s conifer-stocked area fell by 7,006 ha in 2024, largely through bark-beetle fellings (Executive Forest Agency, 2025).
For the current picture, see our explainer Balkan Pine Growth in Bulgaria: A 2010 Growth Model.