My last words on taper equations

A brief review of the nearly half century of research related to taper equations in the Faculty of Forestry at the University of British Columbia is presented. Two new variable-exponent taper models, the 2001 and 2002 models, are introduced and compared to Kozak's 1988 and 1994 models. This comparison, based on 38 species groups consisting of 53 603 trees, demonstrated that the 2002 model is consistently the best overall model of the four, and the 2001 model is the simplest in form and the best for estimating merchantable height. The results of this study also indicate that several fit statistics and lack-of-fit statistics should be used to create indices for ranking taper models for practical applications, instead of only a few. Key words: taper, variable-exponent, history of taper models, comparison of taper models, evaluations of taper models