Let us consider a forest with a given area. It is intuitively clear that the tree number which this area can bear is
limited. The environmental conditions (type of soil, local climatic conditions) are also factors to be taken into account for
the maximum tree capacity. Foresters have established a law called ‘‘self-thinning’’, described hereafter, to evaluate this
maximum capacity. Let us note s∗ the average tree basal area (at the height of 1.3 m) of the forest. Reineke [5] observed
monospecific forests with various densities and various species. Out of these observations he claimed the maximum tree
number nmax(s∗) that a stand can bear is given by the following self-thinning relation: