Growth Models and Their Use in Plantation Forestry

Abstract

Sustainable management of forest resources requires a large amount of supporting information. Especially when managing a forest for production of commercially valuable materials, estimation of present growth of variables which are not possible to measure easily (such as timber volume) and to estimate the growth values in future are essential. Vanclay (1994) defined stand growth models as abstractions of the natural dynamics of a forest stand, which may encompasses growth, mortality and other changes in stand composition and structure. Therefore Forest models can be used as very successful research and management tools. The models designed for research require many complicated and not readily available data, whereas the models designed for management use simpler and more readily accessible data (Johnsen et al., 2001).