Choosing the right regime for your site and objectives
NZDFI’s selected species are adapted to cover the diverse land types with differing soils and climate found within New Zealand’s north eastern regions. Within these regions, forest growers’ choice of durable eucalypt regime and species will be influenced by a number of important factors.
Factors influencing choice of growing regime
- Owners’ objectives and resources
Landowners interested in growing durable eucalypts are likely to want a competitive financial return from the crop, whether this be from timber, carbon, or a combination of outputs. However, landowners will have different site and environmental conditions. The scale of forest area they can plant and manage will also vary. Choice of a durable species and regime needs to match these factors.
- Property soils, climate and land class (LUC)
Site conditions, scale, soils and climate combined with aspect and drainage will also influence the choice of species and regime for any given site.
- Topography including internal access for regime management and harvest
The topography of a possible forestry site will limit the regime that can be chosen. Gentle topography could support any regime including a post and pole regime suited to mechanical ground-based harvesting. On steeper hill country, sawlog production may be the better option. Very steep and erodible areas (e.g. land that is red-zoned under the NES-PF ) could be planted as permanent forests, with potential benefits of carbon sequestration, soil conservation, and biodiversity
- Property location including transport options and sustainable log markets The location of a property could also influence a forest grower’s regime options. Distance to markets is critical to economic success.
The four NZDFI growing regimes
NZDFI recommends that growers interested in planting durable eucalypts take into account these factors in selecting one of the four different recommended forestry regimes:
- Peeler pole regime
- Peeler/sawlog regime
- Permanent forests
- Continuous cover forests.
