The Evolution of Growth and Yield Models for South Australian radiata pine plantations

Productivity of three successive rotations of P. radiata plantations in South Australia over a century

“…Carlyle and Nambiar (2001) found a strong relationship between N mineralisation and growth rates in radiata pine in the region across SQ classes. Later age fertiliser application can increase yield by 10-30% across many sites giving a good return on investment (O'Hehir, 2001).…”

“…Classes are assigned to a descending scale of I (highest) to VII (lowest) ( Table 1; adapted from Lewis et al, 1976). It has been established that under the growing conditions in South Australia, yield measured at about 10 years of age can be used to predict total wood production (including thinnings carried out according to the prescribed regime), over the rotation adjusted to a nominal rotation length of 37 years (O'Hehir et al, 2000). Site quality assessments provide the fundamental information for many forest management decisions.…”

“…Radiata pine plantation forestry in South Australia has been described as ''Living on the edge'' and as Boardman (1988) alerted, ''a situation the industry could expect to find itself given the vagaries of soils and climate''. ForestrySA (predecessor Woods and Forests Department) manages 81,000 ha of radiata pine plantations and has a well managed database, accumulated over 85 years, of wood volume inventory (O'Hehir et al, 2000). The principles underpinning site productivity assessments have remained substantially the same over the years but the system makes increasing use of spatial and information technologies to gather and analyse the data at appropriate scales.…”

Forest observational studies-an essential infrastructure for sustainable use of natural resources

“…Thus, the experiment deliberately imposes a treatment on a group of objects in the interest of observing the response. Examples of manipulated experiments include medium and long-term growth studies in response to different fertilizer applications and stand densities (O'Hehir 2001;Burkhart and Tomé 2012), growth studies of clones on different sites, including marginal ones (Bungart and Hüttl 2004), growth and competition effects in multi-species forests (Vanclay 1994;Pretzsch 2009), or evaluating effects of afforestation on water yield in mountain catchments (Bosch and Gadow 1990). Despite attempts to create homogenous conditions, manipulated field experiments always involve uncertainties in controlling ceteris paribus conditions, which are necessary for obtaining noise-free "dose/response" relations.…”