There exists an algorithm for construction interpolating quadratic splines which preserves the monotony of the data. The taper curves formed with this algorithm, QO-splines, have many good qualities when a sufficient number of measured diameters of a tree is available. In fact, they may even be superior to certain shape preserving taper curves, MR-splines. This algorithm can be modified to preserve also the shape of the data. In the present paper, the quality of taper curves constructed by a new shape preserving from of the algorithm is examined. For this purpose, taper curves are formed for different sets of measurements and their properties are compared with the ones of QO-splines and MR-splines. The results indicate that these new shape-preserving taper curves are in general better than QO-splines and MR-splines even if the differences may be small in many cases. The superiority is the clearer the less measurements are available.
The PDF includes an abstract in Finnish.
A monotony preserving taper curve can be constructed by using a quadratic spline. An algorithm is presented which is suitable for this purpose. It is used to the construction of a taper curve when several measured diameters of a tree are available. These taper curves are formed for different sets of measurements and their properties are evaluated. It appears that the monotony preserving quadratic spline can give a better taper curve than the usual cubic spline.
The PDF includes a summary in Finnish.