A model to determine site quality at early stages of four tropical species

To count with a tool that allows the assessment of site quality of forest plantations at early stages is very useful for decision making in order to apply a good management for commercial forest plantations, which have become more important now a days when great areas are being planted with tropical taxa, about which there is little accumulated experience. At present it is only possible to make preliminary assessments of site qualities from development data not near the shift of plantations, since most of them are young and the eldest are 10 years old. The aim of the actual work was to estimate site quality at early stages, through an exponential model that best represents the height/age relation of Cedrela odorata, Swietenia macrophylla, Gmelina arborea and Tectona grandis in Veracruz state, with the data obtained from the assessment of 29 projects of commercial forest plantations from the year 2000 to 2004. Two models were considered: exponential and of exponential association. The first one had the best fit; therefore, it was used to obtain the family of equations from which the family of anamorphic curves was generated. The four equations made it possible to have an approximate site quality evaluation of young commercial forest plantations of the selected species.