This is a visualization tool for vegetation structure/succession in space and/or time mainly for forest gap models. However, it could also be used to visualize observed forest stands. If used for models, they should contain either individual trees or cohorts (e.g. LPJ-GUESS by Smith et al. (2014) doi:10.5194/bg-11-2027-2014). For a list of required and additional data fileds see the vignette.
For details, see the vignette (vignette("DGVM3D", package="DGVM3D")) or https://joergsteinkamp.github.io/DGVM3D