Automated Blocking

The automated blocking strategy used in FSSAM groups together stands that are in the timber harvest land base into cutblocks. This is done in such a way that the distribution of the areas of the cutblocks will conform as far as possible to a target distribution. For example, the target distribution could specify that 20% of the area should be in blocks of size between 80 and 250 hectares, 40% of the area in blocks between 40 and 80 hectares, and the remaining 40% in blocks less than 40 hectares.

The actual blocking is done by grouping stands together on the basis of similarity. Three overall types of similarity category are used to determine whether adjacent stands may be grouped:

The actual blocking of compatible stands is done by fusing adjacent stands with sufficiently similar properties (as outlined above). The stand blocking process starts with the selection of a large stand as a "seed block", and, in an iterative process, fuses suitable adjacent stands with the growing block until a threshold determined by the block size distribution is reached.

This approach to grouping on the basis of attribute similarity and adjacency provides a flexible and powerful way of designing cutblocks.