Overall objectives of Module 1.3 are to enhance students’ knowledge and comprehension of models commonly used to describe stand structure and project stand development and, by extension, forest development over time. Examples of the former include standard yield tables that are frequently used to estimate stand-level attributes of interest for forest management such as volume on an area basis using relatively few easily obtained measures of tree size, and yield curves that similarly relate measures of tree size to merchantable volume. The latter tend to rely upon quantifying competitive interactions among trees such as size-density, density-yield and self-thinning relationships, and using such information to project growth and yield over time. Site index models that make use of age-height relationships to model site productivity, diameter distribution models, gap models, neighbourhood models, resource based stand models, and resource- and individual-based spatially explicit models of stand development (e.g. SORTIE) will also be examined. Participants are encouraged to undertake related field training (Module 1.4)

Specific objectives are to enable students to: Identify, use, and explain predictive tools/models; and explain their strengths and weaknesses.