OFSIM: A simulation shell for forest management

OFSIM (Object-oriented Forest SIMulator) is a forest stand structure simulator for management purposes, written in object-oriented programming C++. This application for modelling forest management at the stand level has potential application for exploring several kinds of management strategy and possible extension into estate modelling. The computational aspects of simulation with OFSIM have two types of object: (1) physical objects in the forest to represent an abstraction of modelling in forestry such as pines, thinning and abstraction in forest financial analysis; (2) computational objects to represent the abstraction of several numerical techniques for dynamics of size-class distribution of forest structure. The material presented here, however, is a description of the simulation models, their working mechanisms and implementation. The percentile-index function for radiata pine from several forest experiments and the state-space approach for a regional model in New Zealand have been implemented in the simulation and further model developments and their programming implementation on OFSIM have been described.