Decision support software tools for pine plantations

Abstract

Software tools that link silviculture, wood quality and grading of structural timber are being developed to support the managers of Queensland's commercial pine estate. The tools allow the evaluation of alternative silvicultural scenarios, in terms of internal rate of return and net present value. This paper describes the decision support project that will bring together software tools that grade sawn timber outputs from a conversion model, assign revenues, link to costs associated with a specific silvicultural scenario, and finally generate internal rates of return and net present values. These software tools provide a powerful decision support system that will pass on significant benefits to plantation managers. They will capture several decades of research to maximise the benefits to forest growers and processors by linking silviculture, wood quality and grading of structural timber.