Australian native forest commerciality

The Australian Sawlog Commerciality Database is the first spatial database of potential sawlog merchantability and productivity for Australia's native forests. It shows native forests capable of producing sawlogs commercially in Australia. This report describes how the database was developed and validated.

Commerciality is the expected volume yield of commercial sawlog that is available from a forest stand over the long term, assuming good silvicultural practices are followed. Commerciality is derived from a combination of the merchantability and productivity of forest stands. Merchantability is a forest stand attribute based on tree species composition and stand structure, and in this work refers to a forest stand's suitability for commercial production of sawlogs or other high-quality products. Productivity is also a forest stand attribute, and describes the potential yield of sawlogs from a forest stand.

To create the spatial database, ABARES obtained measures of sawlog merchantability and productivity from datasets in the National Forest Inventory (NFI) and combined these into attributes useful for mapping forest commerciality on a national scale. The database incorporates forest yield associations, which are groupings of forest types that display similar commerciality attributes. ABARES developed the national database using Regional Forest Agreement datasets, FORWOOD and Resource Assessment Commission data and estimates of productivity, and information provided directly to the NFI or published by state and territory agencies. Multiple-use public forest, leasehold forest and private forest are the main tenures reported because forests on these tenures are generally available for sawlog harvesting.

The Australian Sawlog Commerciality Database contains data of varying age and the level of confidence for the data input depends on the age of that data. Access to the data is restricted because it contains some commercial-in-confidence information.