A Critique of “Trees as a Local Climatic Wind Indicator”

Abstract

This comment reviews many of the problems associated with using deformed vegetation as an indicator of mean annual wind speed and wind power potential. It critiques the Wade and Hewson (1979) use of a ?jackknife technique? to estimate prediction errors for mean annual wind speeds and presents a reanalysis of the data. It is concluded that the available evidence still suggests that wind deformed trees will prove to be unreliable as well as imprecise estimators of either mean annual wind speeds or more complicated quantities such as wind power potential.