The SIMA version was developed for a study on climate change and forest management alternatives. The growth and development of trees and ground cover are controlled by temperature and light conditions and the availability of nitrogen and water. Because of the large computational tasks involved, parallel processing is used in this version when generating data points for 3-D visualization.
The MELA version aims at economic analysis of silvicultural options of stand management. Stand development is based on statistically estimated individual tree growth and mortality models. Both deterministic and stochastic optimization can be used to answer to questions concerning the optimum rotation, number of thinnings, timing of thinnings, thinning type, and planting density.