Advanced decision support for transitioning Irish Sitka spruce forests to Continuous Cover Forestry.
CCFPI Ireland was developed from original MSc Forestry GIS research by Jay Gilbert into the suitability of Irish Sitka spruce plantations for Continuous Cover Forestry, and expanded by BranchX into a six-module operational pilot model.
Irish forestry is under pressure to move away from clear-fell dependence on even-aged Sitka spruce, yet owners and managers have no consistent way to judge whether a given stand can transition safely. Windthrow exposure, stand structure, soils, access and regulatory sensitivity all interact, and the judgement is currently made stand by stand with fragmented evidence and little traceability.
CCFPI Ireland is a spatial and forestry decision-support platform that assembles the available evidence for a parcel, reports six independent module positions, states its own confidence and evidence gaps honestly, and produces a traceable pilot record that a forestry professional can review, challenge and build on.
No blended suitability score is produced. Each module reports its own position, its own confidence and its own evidence gaps, so a reviewer can see exactly what the assessment rests on.
Terrain, soils and exposure characteristics that govern whether a site can physically sustain a continuous cover system.
Structure, stability and thinning history of the existing crop, and whether it can be opened safely at all.
How windthrow exposure changes under different intervention scenarios rather than as a single static rating.
Exposure to drought, storm and waterlogging pressures across planning horizons.
Access, extraction, entry frequency and the operational realities of repeated light interventions.
Designations, water, peat, archaeology and consent considerations that shape what is permissible.
Desk-based orientation using available spatial evidence. Indicative only.
Adds surveyed stand inventory and management history supplied by a forestry professional.
Adds a named professional verification and provenance declaration against the supplied evidence.
A funded pilot across a defined estate or portfolio, with structured outputs and review.
Academic or institutional collaboration to test module structure and threshold calibration.
Structured review of the six-module methodology by practising foresters.
Access to real stands for evidence capture and output comparison.
Provision of inventory, boundary or environmental data to support calibration.
Early access arrangement for organisations intending longer-term operational use.
Jay Gilbert is the founder and director of BranchX Limited, a neurodivergent-led Irish technology company based in Wexford. CCFPI originates in his MSc Forestry research, which applied GIS multi-criteria and fuzzy suitability analysis to the transition potential of Irish Sitka spruce plantations. That dissertation model is retained as a historical proof of concept; the operational pilot model was designed separately and deliberately left uncalibrated pending validation.
View a sample pilot assessment