The forest as a warehouse

New Zealand's timber harvest is rapidly increasing and will continue to do so over the next 20 years. This increase provides opportunities for adding value and increasing profitability, but to achieve the full potential of the harvest, the best management decisions at strategic, tactical, and operational levels are required. The key to market-driven harvest planning in New Zealand is a greatly improved knowledge of the quantity, quality, and condition of the standing trees. Industry is demanding that pre-harvest inventory be intensified with more detail about the quality of the stems, more geographical precision as to the location of the potential log products, and more flexibility in the analysis of the data. Improvements in instruments for use in the forest, in remote sensing techniques, and in operations research and geostatistical algorithms should lead to better computer-based decision support systems.