Continuous Cover Forestry (CCF) is a type of forest management that is based on ecological, environmental, and biological principles. Specific definitions of CCF greatly vary and the concept usually includes a number of tenets or criteria. The most important tenet of CCF is the requirement to abandon the practice of large-scale clearfelling in favour of selective thinning/harvesting and natural regeneration methods.

CCF is commonly believed to have its main origin in an academic debate that was conducted through publications in a number of European and North American countries towards the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. Our findings are exclusively based on a literature review of the history of CCF and they revealed that the European origins of CCF go much further back to a form of farm forestry that started to be practised in Central Europe in the 17th century. Eventually, this type of farm forestry led to the formation of the single-tree selection system as we know it today. Another influential tradition line contributing to modern CCF is individual-based forest management, which breaks forest stands down into small neighbourhood-based units. The centres of these units are dominant frame trees which form the framework of a forest stand. Consequently, management is only carried out in the local neighbourhood of frame trees. Individual-based forest management also modified inflexible area-control approaches of plantation forest management in favour of the flexible size-control method.

We found evidence that the three aforementioned tradition lines are equally important and much interacted in shaping modern CCF. Since CCF is an international accomplishment, it is helpful to thoroughly study the drivers and causes of such concepts. Understanding the gradual evolution can give valuable clues for the introduction and adaptation of CCF in countries where the concept is new.

Analysing and modelling plant growth is an important interdisciplinary field of plant science. The use of relative growth rates, involving the analysis of plant growth relative to plant size, has more or less independently emerged in different research groups and at different times and has provided powerful tools for assessing the growth performance and growth efficiency of plants and plant populations. In this paper, we explore how these isolated methods can be combined to form a consistent methodology for modelling relative growth rates.

We review and combine existing methods of analysing and modelling relative growth rates and apply a combination of methods to Sitka spruce (Picea sitchensis (Bong.) Carr.) stem-analysis data from North Wales (UK) and British Douglas fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii (Mirb.) Franco) yield table data.

The results indicate that, by combining the approaches of different plant-growth analysis laboratories and using them simultaneously, we can advance and standardise the concept of relative plant growth. Particularly the growth multiplier plays an important role in modelling relative growth rates. Another useful technique has been the recent introduction of size-standardised relative growth rates.

Modelling relative growth rates mainly serves two purposes, 1) an improved analysis of growth performance and efficiency and 2) the prediction of future or past growth rates. This makes the concept of relative growth ideally suited to growth reconstruction as required in dendrochronology, climate change and forest decline research and for interdisciplinary research projects beyond the realm of plant science.