Farm Forestry New ZealandNew free online forest productivity calculator for small growers
A new online calculator for radiata pine and Douglas-fir productivity is now available, free of charge.
The Forecaster Calculator was built for owners and advisors of small forests, who can use it to test out different management scenarios for their forests, according to what they want to produce – for example, it can provide estimates of the volume and log product mix on a particular site at a particular age.
Bryan Graham, Science Leader at Scion says, “This tool was purpose built to be simple and effective. It’s online, so it can be accessible anywhere and anytime on either your tablet, laptop or desktop.”
The calculator is built using the same set of models as the Forecaster desktop application, which is used by the forest industry for yield table generation (i.e. log product volumes by age), regime evaluation and silvicultural scheduling.
The calculator combines the site specific information from the national models for site potential productivity (the Site Index and the 300 Index) with data that the grower can insert and vary. The variable options include stocking rate, pruning, timing of thinning, residual stems per hectare following thinning and harvest timing. Each new simulation creates a set of pdf reports based on log yield and silvicultural options.
Not included in the calculator are the settings and options that the full version of Forecaster provides. Instead, the model’s default options reflect standard silvicultural regimes on normal farm/forestry sites, planted with commonly-used stock.
Access to the Forecaster Calculator is via the Forest Growers Research web site
https://fgr.nz/programmes/calculators/forecaster-calculator
The new calculator was developed by Scion, with funding support from the Forest Growers Levy Trust.
Software provider Integral will provide support for the calculator.
If you want to know more contact Melissa Evans melissa.evans@scionresearch.com
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