A Fresh New Look for the Forecaster Calculator
We have been busy behind the scenes giving the free online Forecaster Calculator a fresh new look.
Integral recently completed a visual refresh of the calculator. It now has a cleaner, more modern, and user-friendly design, with clearer information, improved navigation, and reports that are easier to read and print.
For smaller woodlot owners, the Forecaster Calculator is a free and accessible online tool. Its development is funded by Forest Growers Research (FGR) and the Forest Growers Levy Trust (FGLT). Helping to ensure it remains freely available to forest owners and the wider forestry industry.
You can explore the Forecaster Calculator online at:
For those needing a comprehensive forestry planning solution, the licensed Forecaster Application offers advanced capabilities for yield-table generation, regime evaluation and silvicultural scheduling. It is widely used across the forest industry to support informed planning and management decisions.
What is the Forecaster Calculator?
The Forecaster Calculator is a simple forest simulation tool designed primarily for small woodlot owners in New Zealand.
It allows users to create a rough estimate of tree growth, harvest volume, and the potential log product mix for a particular site and clearfell age, calculated on a per-hectare basis.
The calculator uses the same underlying models as the Forecaster desktop application, helping to keep its outputs consistent with the software widely used throughout the industry for yield-table generation, regime evaluation, and silvicultural scheduling.
Its simplified interface also uses a series of smart defaults designed to represent standard silvicultural regimes on typical New Zealand farm and forestry sites.
What has changed?
The focus of this update was improving the calculator’s look, feel and readability without changing the trusted modelling and calculation functionality behind it.
The visual refresh includes:
- A cleaner, more contemporary interface
- Clearer navigation and page layouts
- A more user-friendly regime setup
- Improved reports with a clean white background and clearer numbering
These changes make it easier to enter information, run a simulation, and understand the resulting reports.
While the Forecaster Calculator is intended to provide an initial estimate rather than replace a detailed pre-harvest inventory, it can be a valuable starting point for small forest and woodlot owners exploring how their site, forest management decisions, and chosen harvest age could affect log yields.
Continuing to improve Forestry Software
At Integral, maintaining and modernising the software our customers and the wider industry rely on is an important part of what we do.
Sometimes that means developing entirely new solutions. At other times, it means taking an existing and useful tool and making it clearer, more modern and easier to work with.
The refreshed Forecaster Calculator is a great example of how thoughtful visual updates can improve the everyday user experience while retaining the proven functionality underneath.
Interested?
If you have any questions about the Forecaster Calculator or would like to learn more about licensing the Forecaster Application. please contact us.
