The Coppice Rotation That Maximises Yield: A Cutting Rule, the Cost of Cutting Off Time, and What Stool Death Takes Away

For a coppice woodlot, the keeper's main decision is when to cut. Cut too young and each harvest is small; wait too long and the stand spends years adding volume slowly while the land could have started again. This paper computes the best moment for a stated growth model of Eucalyptus camaldulensis coppice, a Chapman-Richards curve with asymptote 180 cubic metres per hectare, rate 0.25 per year and shape 2.8. Mean annual increment peaks at a rotation of 7.19 years, where the stand holds 108.38 cubic metres per hectare and yields 15.07 cubic metres per hectare per year. The peak is flat: cutting one year early loses 1.28 per cent of yield and cutting one year late loses 0.98 per cent, while cutting two years early loses 5.85 per cent. Stool mortality is the larger long-run threat. At a stated loss of 5 per cent of stools per cycle with no replanting, average yield over the first ten cycles falls to 12.10 cubic metres per hectare per year, stocking reaches 80 per cent after 4.35 cycles, and by the tenth cycle annual yield has fallen to 9.50 cubic metres per hectare per year. The resulting rule is to cut near seven years, treat a year either way as a small matter, and spend effort on replacing dead stools, which is where the yield actually goes. All results are computed from the stated model, and the study is simulated, not measured.