A web based growth and yield systems for southeastern pine and hardwood stands

Faced with the challenges of maintaining customer-specified objectives and meeting deadlines, forest land managers must integrate various mensurational information sources for developing management scenarios. Cost efficient measures are a consideration to save both time and money for a client. While inventory data collection is time and money intensive, data processing does not have to be costly. This paper presents an open access, non-fee website that will host several common growth and yield models. The growth and yield web-based system was developed by scientists at Mississippi State University. Software programs are also available in standalone versions with additional capabilities. Users may project future yields by either implementing combinations of thinning procedures based on a specified residual stand basal area, or projecting the stand to a desired age. Initial stand data and management options for growth and yield models are described in a downloadable user manual. Forest land managers should find this website to be a valuable tool for estimating the growth and yield needs of their clients. Other decision support utilities included on the website are TProfile©, TVolume©, and calculators for estimating required sample size, confidence limits and sampling error from stratified and unstratified random samples (Matney 1996a, Matney 1996b).