J. W. Shirley

Barbara Höck and Tim Payn, working with J. W. Shirley of Forestry Corporation, had 1,643 forest compartment boundaries in digital form and imported them into ARC/INFO. The compartment identifiers linked 744 known site-index values to the spatial data, while the GIS supplied compartment-centre coordinates to a geostatistical analysis and received the estimated values back for mapping. The job shows a step beyond computerised forest inventory: the forest's management units had become spatial objects that could connect inventory records, statistical estimation and map production.