modelling

[Rich Shepard]

On Tue, 2 Nov 1999, kjell-olav.bjerknes wrote:

> I posted a message some days ago, where I asked if anyone had used Grass
> in modelling forestry. I tried to follow as best as I could, but the
> debate seemed to go into the discussion of which program-language that was
> the best, and how to comment your programing.

Kjell-Olav,

  And this didn't answer your questions? Tsch-tsch. :-)
 
> Any way, I picked up two interesting program names Splus and R, since my
> university does'nt have a Splus license, R was the only alternative,
> since someone said it was free of charge. But, where can I get it?

  The R system is for writing your own statistical programs and models. You
can find more at <http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at>. There's also a page I have
bookmarked somewhere which has about 50 different packages for R already up
and running.

  But, let me take a shot at answering your original question. I doubt that
there is any one packaged "forestry" solution for any GIS. After all, there
are very many questions which one could ask. A local (to me) forestry
consulting company moved a few years ago into a forestry-oriented GIS
company because there is more money there now. You can look at
<http://www.atterbury.com> to see what they offer in the Windows world
(primarily ARC/Info-based solutions).

  What specifically do you want to do? Timber cruising? Wildlife habitat
assessment? Landscape pattern analyses? Resource allocation decision
support? I think that you need to specifically define the answers you need
before you can determine how best to get there.

  If you want to continue this thread off the list, send a message directly
to me.

Rich

Dr. Richard B. Shepard, President

                       Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc. (TM)
              Making environmentally-responsible mining happen. (SM)         
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