TEAK PLANTATIONS IN NILAMBUR - Kerala Forest Research Institute

covering 7680 ha is available from Working Plans. Along with the field work
for this project, the site quality for 45 teak plantations has been determined by
the conventional method. Appendix 7 gives the list of those plantations and
their site qualities.
Table 3.8 gives the distribution of plantation for which both site quality
information and yield of any type of work are available. It shows the number
of plantations and area operation-wise. All the plantations may not at present
be standing, particularly those which were finally felled.
Site quality information of a plantation has many uses. It can be used for site
selection, yield regulation, thinning intensity and yield prediction. As a
corollary, if yield figures are available it can be used to assess the site quality
of the plantation. The site quality of plantation based on top height can be
compared with the site quality based on actual yields, grouping plantations by
different types of work.
For each set of plantations under different types of work the site quality
information based on top height is available either from the working plan or
this study. Based on that information, percentage distribution of area in
different site quality classes is presented in Table 3.9. It can be seen that most
of the area of plantations both by area and number had a site quality of II or
higher. There is no plantation in the lower classes of III/IV and IV.
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