Creaming: a fast track to continuous cover forests?

The premises for designing economic transformation to continuous cover forests might be: early revenue is preferable to delayed revenue; big trees make more money than mediumsized trees; fast growth may bring quality penalties; small trees cost money to remove; there is an opportunity cost in felling trees not at optimal rotation; in the temperate/boreal zone regeneration may need a large canopy gap; planting more trees costs more money; the long period of transformation is a bad thing if the target system is more profitable than the existing one. Early revenue is obtainable by premature clear felling, at lesser cost than by transformation,. Removing the largest trees from an even-aged crop gives net revenues early; minimises deviation from optimal felling size; provides gaps large enough for some but not excessive regeneration. Successive removal of the largest trees creates fully diverse size structure quickly. Subsequent fellings will also be of high value trees. Both the resulting forest, and the process of transformation, could be more profitable than alternative treatments. Preliminary results of time study and stand modelling support this provisional conclusion.