Timber production model

[Freddy]

Hello,

my question on InVEST might seem outdated, but in several papers that used invest I red that it is possible to compute the timber production with the timber production model (e.g. DOI: 10.1007/s11442-018-1543-4). I just downloaded invest to get started, but I can not find the timber production model. Is it not available anymore? Do you recommend any other model for the calculation of timber?

Greetings
Frederic

[swolny]

Hi @Freddy -

No, the Timber Production model is not available any more. Really, it was less of a model and more of a spreadsheet calculation that simply calculated total timber value accounting for a discount rate. If you want to see the inputs and how it worked, it’s part of InVEST 3.3.1, which you can download here. But please note that we are not supporting this, and since it’s so old are unlikely to be able to answer any questions about how it works.

I haven’t used any other timber production model, so don’t have any suggestions, but perhaps others do?

~ Stacie

[Freddy]

Hi Stacie,

thanks for your reply. I will have a look into it. Just out of curiosity: do you know why the model was excluded?

Greetings
Freddy

[jdouglass]

Hey @Freddy,

We decided to remove the Timber Production model from InVEST because of how simple it was. As Stacie described, the actual calculations were trivial and are more easily calculated in a spreadsheet according to the specific parameters of a study.

Whenever we have a model in InVEST, we need the benefit of maintaining the program to outweigh the cost of maintaining it. In this case, the calculations were so simple and largely non-spatial that if someone really wanted to use the model, we believe that it would be more useful implemented in a spreadsheet than available as an InVEST model so we removed it from the suite. As Stacie mentioned, the model is still available in InVEST 3.3.1 (and might well still work for you!), but we can’t offer much, if any, support for it.

If you’re interested, the InVEST 3.3.1 User’s Guide chapter, available online, has the details of the model.

Hope you’re well,
James

[Freddy]

Hi James,

that is reasonable and makes sense. Thank you very much for your detailed answer. I will discuss it with my teacher and see if the timber model is sufficient enough for our study project.

Greetings
Freddy