Forest trees exhibit a large variation in the basal area increment (BAI), and the variation is attributed to the stand density, biodiversity, and stand spatial structure. Studying and quantifying the effect of these above variables on tree growth is vital for future forest management. However, the stand spatial structure based on neighboring trees has rarely been considered, especially in the mixed forests. This study adopted the random-forest (RF) algorithm to model and interpret BAI based on stand density, biodiversity, and spatial structure. Fourteen independent variables, including two stand density predictors, four biodiversity predictors, and eight spatial structure predictors, were evaluated. The RF model was trained for the whole stand, three tree species groups (gap, neutral, and shade_tolerant), and two tree species (spruce and fir). A 10-fold blocked cross-validation was then used to optimize the hyper-parameters and evaluate the models. The squared correlation coefficients (R²) for the six groups were 0.233 for the whole stand, 0.575 for fir, 0.609 for shade_tolerant, 0.622 for neutral, 0.722 for gap, and 0.730 for spruce. The Stand Density Index (SDI) was the most-important predictor, suggesting that BAI is primarily restricted by competition. BAI and species biodiversity were positively correlated for the whole stand. The stands were expected to be randomly distributed based on the relationship between the uniform angle index (W) and growth. The relationship between dominance (U) and BAI indicated that small trees should be planted around the light-demanding tree species and vice versa. Of note, these findings emphasize the need to consider the three types of variables in mixed forests, especially the spatial structure factors. This study may help make significant advances in species composition, spatial arrangement, and the sustainable development of mixed forests.

Spatial structure dynamics play a major role in understanding the mechanisms of forest structure and biodiversity formation. Recently, researches on the spatial structure dynamics utilizing multi-period data have been published. However, these studies only focused on comparative analyses of the spatial structure of multi-period living trees, without an in-depth analysis of the change processes. In this study, we propose a new comprehensive analysis method for dynamic change of the spatial structure at the individual level, which includes three processes (living trees’ flow, mortality process and recruitment process) that have not been considered in previous researches. Four spatial structural parameters (SSSPs, Uniform angle index, Mingling, Dominance and Crowding) and a natural spruce-fir-broadleaf mixed forest with two-phase data were taken as an example to find out the laws of the spatial structure dynamics. All types of dynamic change were named and their proportions were analyzed. The proportion of changes in the SSSPs of individuals was relatively high, even though the mean values of the stand did not change considerably. The five values (0, 0.25, 0.5, 0.75, 1) of the SSSPs are in mutual flow, and the flows are typically one-step, with three-steps and four-steps changes being uncommon. The processes of mortality and recruitment have a higher influence on the spatial structure than the flow of living trees. The dynamic change of spatial structure analysis method created in this study can capture more features not discovered in earlier approaches, as well as guiding forest management in some ways. Understanding the nuances of these changes is a critical part of reasonable spatial structure and biodiversity maintenance, and should be the focus of future research efforts.