Brazil-DSS usage on teak plantation

Case

Has flag	N/A
Has full name	DSS usage on teak plantation in Brazil
Has country	Brazil
Has location
Has responsible organisation	Simosol
Has type of owner organization
Has related DSS
Has start date
Has end date
Has DSS development stage	use
Has decision stage
Has temporal scale	Long term (strategic), Medium term (tactical), Short term (operational)
Has spatial context	Non spatial
Has spatial scale	Forest level
Has decision making dimension	Single decision maker
Has objectives dimension	Single objective
Has goods and services dimension	Market wood products
Has working group theme
Has website
Has description	An in-depth interview of forest management planners of the use of DSS in their daily work; aspects of including which planning tasks they use DSS or not, and why. Focus on a company having teak plantations.
Has reference
Has wiki contact person	jussi.rasinmaki@simosol.fi
Has wiki contact e-mail	jussi.rasinmaki@simosol.fi
Has DSS development
Has decision support techniques
Has knowledge management processes
Has support for social participation

This case study was conducted in November 2013 as a FORSYS STSM. Interviews were done in 5 companies (1 belonging to this category) with the people responsible for forest management planning. The aim was to find out what the company does, how they do do it, do they use a DSS for it, why and why not?

The STSM was organised by Atrium Forest Consulting / Silvana Nobre. The background of the STSM researcher is forest management DSS development in Finland.

See "Brazil: Short rotation eucalyptus pulp wood plantations" for general characteristics about plantation forestry and the use of DSS. The differences between the eucalyptus plantations and teak plantations are highlighted here.

The base silvicultural regime includes also thinnings. The regime is based more on a "rule of thumb" approach than in eucalyptus plantations, a direct consequence of the history and extent of respective plantations in Brazil. Teak plantations also have somewhat the same phenomenon of growth characteristics changing between clones as eucalyptus plantations, but this is not as intensive.

Related to the silvicultural regime, the unit value of the cut timber changes dramatically between harvests from first thinnings to final cut.

Observations:

• Operational planning still the basis; making sure the base regime is running smoothly. However the role of long term planning is bigger than in short rotation plantations. It has a clear guiding role for management regime formulation as well.
  • long term planning: same tool as in short rotation plantation, but not same practical problems with it: the setup of the management closer to the origins of the system (“forestry, not agriculture”)
• The kind of organization you are matters also: teak plantations have longer rotation, and have to accommodate the requirements of outside investment with this => planning is used to match requirements of investments to the possibilities in management.
• Growth models matter: longer time span, slower cycle for changes needed in completely changing your growth models: there has been investment in tool for making sure the growth models are realistic for your plantations