Introduction:

Chest-height trunk diameter and height are the main variables measured in forestry inventories, as they aid in the decision-making process in forest plantation management and in research on growth modeling, among other uses.

Objective:

The aim was to find the mathematical function that best relates diameter at chest height (CHD, $\approx$1.3 m) to height (Ht) in three forest species grown within the same area: wild avocado (Cinnamomum sp.), Chiapas white pine (Pinus chiapensis [Martínez] Andresen) and piocho (Melia azedarach L.).

Materials and methods:

Twenty-two non-linear models, of which thirteen had two parameters and nine had three parameters, were compared using the difference in Akaike’s information criterion corrected (AICc).

Results and discussion:

The best models were: the two-parameter hyperbola for wild avocado (Ht = (17.58*CHD)/(12.33 + CHD), R2 = 0.79, SEE = 0.80, n = 647); the three-parameter Richards’ function for Chiapas white pine (Ht = 10.14*(1 - e-0.206*CHD)1.689, R2 = 0.35, SEE = 1.28, n = 664); and the three-parameter sigmoid Korf’s function for piocho ( $\text{Ht =}{\text{18.25*(e}}^{\text{-2.46*}\left(\text{CHD-0.556}\mathrm{}\right)}\text{)}$,R2 = 0.49, SEE = 0.96, n = 692).

Conclusion:

The best model was different for each species and the actual data around the predicted curve were highly scattered, particularly in Chiapas white pine.

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