This study tried to demonstrate how timber cruising works, as part of forest management planning, can be used to preselect trees for habitats, according to Forest Stewardship Council requirements. The candidate trees for deadwood were considered beech, oaks, and Durmast, due to their longevity and capacity to host a large variety of taxa to protect. The new metric defined as stochastic dominance index is based on the ratio between two cumulative distribution functions, for high-quality trees and for low-quality trees, respectively. In order to use most of the data collected, for each stand we calculated two separate stochastic dominance indices: one based on diameters at breast height and the next one based on volumes. Based on the two stochastic dominance indices estimated in each stand, we clustered the stands with more than five trees of interest into three categories: 1) island of aging trees (when both stochastic dominance indices are <1), 2) stands where the harvesting operations can be delayed 10 years (both stochastic dominance indices are >1) if needed to even out the forest age structure, and 3) stands that can be harvested in due time if the two stochastic dominance index conveys opposite signals. It was tested, as a backup solution, a second index defined as the ratio between the two coefficients of variation: high-quality trees vs. low-quality trees. If the number of trees falling into whatever quality class is smaller than five, the stochastic dominance index conveys erroneous signals and should be replaced with the second index based on mean-standard deviation.
Cite this article as: Ceornea, C., & Drăgoi, M. (2025). A new metrics to manage the deadwood in forest stewardship council certified forests. Forestist, 75, 0040, doi: 10.5152/ forestist.2024.24040.