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Agriculture and Forestry

Plantation Suitability Analysis

Client: Ian Bail Timbercorp Treefarms Pty Ltd

Timbercorp Treefarms Pty Ltd is a forest management company that manages significant native species plantations across south western Victoria and southern Western Australia.

Timbercorp has an ongoing program to identify suitable land that might be leased/acquired for use as future native forest plantations. This program involves location of potential areas of interest and preliminary assessment of plantation profitability based on a key set of environmental and economic factors. Traditionally this phase of land identification has involved significant local knowledge and a lot of leg work to cover the vast areas of Victoria and Western Australia that could be considered suitable. Timbercorp wished to utilise the power of GIS technology and the latest available geodatabases to tackle this classic 'land suitability' question to help focus its marketing and land assessment resources.

Timbercorp engaged Spatial Vision to conduct a GIS rule-based regional analysis that would produce set of geospatial datasets and map products that delineated suitability and profitability classifications for south western Victoria and southern Western Australia. Timbercorp provided the key parameters defining 'land suitability and profitability' and Spatial Vision utilised its expertise and knowledge in developing and implementing geospatial analyses to realise these concepts as spatial information products.

Spatial Vision's solution involved the development of a set of modular analysis procedures that produced the key spatial parameters that contributed to plantation profitability (availability of land, road distance to port and estimated tree growth rates based on land fertility and rainfall). This modular approach allowed Timbercorp to view the effects of the assumptions made regarding each parameter and the base information used. Spatial Vision utilised its significant skills in the ERSI raster analysis environment (GRID) to undertake this analysis project.

The data products produced from this analysis were formatted for use in Timbercorp's in-house GIS and all map products were provided as PDFs for inclusion on Timbercorp's intranet. These products are being used by Timbercorp's land acquisition and management staff and are assisting in allocation of resources with respect to land acquisition and assessment.