Towards a shank description for Laurel <em>Cordia alliodora</em> in agroforestry systems in Bosque Protector Sumaco, Ecuador

The Protected Forest Sumaco is characterized by extensive areas of secondary forests. It provides a buffer zone for the National Park Sumaco-Napo-Galeras at an altitude of 1160 m above sea level and with a precipitation of 4000 mm year-1. Adequate management of secondary forest in this protected area requires basic data about growth and volume-dependent regeneration of Laurel in Agro forestry systems. Consequently, accurate and flexible methods are required to estimate the volume and taper curve. For the parameterization of the total volume and taper function, 77 trees were taken. Altogether 308 observations were used, such as DBH, the diameter at 1.3, 2, 4, 6, 8 meters, and the total height. The volume was estimated with the Smalian formula for two sections. Splein model used in this research were validated using 44 independent trees from the neighboring community of Wawa Sumaco. The stem represents an assortment of saleable timber products and, for comparing different cross-cutting options, its shape needs to be known. Stem forms can by described in great detail using taper function with a limited number ofparameters. The Pain function was fitted to describe a stem taper of Laurel. The algebraically and numerically consistent tree volume and taper function gave reliable results for the determination of the total volume and taper function of Laurel.