Florian Hartig

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r3PG

A fast R interface to the 3-PG forest growth model, for pure and mixed stands.

GitHubCRAN

Downloads per year

23,554 downloads from the Posit (RStudio) CRAN mirror since 2020, through 22 October 2026

Cited 60 times on Google Scholar, summed over its 2 entries there (as of 23 October 2026)

r3PG wraps a Fortran implementation of 3-PG (Physiological Processes Predicting Growth), one of the most widely used forest growth simulators worldwide, in an R package. It covers both model versions: 3-PGpjs for even-aged, monospecific, evergreen stands, and 3-PGmix for deciduous, uneven-aged or mixed-species stands.

Compiled code makes the model fast enough for sensitivity analysis and full Bayesian calibration, which both require running it many times.

r3PG succeeds threePGN, an earlier R package by Francesco Minunno, Florian Hartig and Volodymyr Trotsiuk that wrapped a Fortran implementation of 3PGN, a variant of the 3-PG model. threePGN is no longer maintained; its code remains available on GitHub.

Authors: Volodymyr Trotsiuk (maintainer), Florian Hartig, David Forrester, Ramiro Silveyra Gonzalez.

Paper describing r3PG

Citations

r3PG has been cited 60 times on Google Scholar as of 23 October 2026. The total adds up the citations of the paper describing it and of the package itself, which Scholar lists separately. The chart shows how they are distributed over the years, as of 20 October 2026; the 2026 figure covers the year up to that date.

Citations per year

Widely cited work citing r3PG

The most-cited articles that cite r3PG or its paper, ranked by their own citation count in OpenAlex; the group's own papers are left out.

  1. Enhanced agricultural carbon sinks provide benefits for farmers and the climate Stefan Frank et al. (2024), Nature Food · 68 citations
  2. Calibration of the process-based model 3-PG for major central European tree species David Ian Forrester et al. (2021), European Journal of Forest Research · 54 citations
  3. Tree growth in Switzerland is increasingly constrained by rising evaporative demand Volodymyr Trotsiuk et al. (2021), Journal of Ecology · 51 citations
  4. Sharp decline in future productivity of tropical reforestation above 29°C mean annual temperature Anja Nölte et al. (2023), Science Advances · 33 citations
  5. Effects of climate on the growth of Swiss uneven-aged forests: Combining >100 years of observations with the 3-PG model David Ian Forrester et al. (2021), Forest Ecology and Management · 25 citations

All citing works on Google Scholar →