Note: I am away but still am the only comment moderator for now. I’ve been told that I’ll have cell coverage when I get to where I’m going this afternoon, so there may be slowness associated with approving comments depending on various factors.
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Help! I was trying to communicate that only some California forests have timber industry and markets, so that it is unlikely that timber industry will be doing anything to speak of in the future. So I went to the Cut and Sold Report and tried to interpret it. Here is 2024 for Region 5. I know there are many people out there who can help with this so please speak up.
Some obvious questions..
1. What is the sold number?
2. What causes a cut volume to be negative?
3. What causes a cut value to be negative?
4. To get an idea of how much the Angeles and Cleveland’s 100 and 150 MBF is.. I tried using this and made up a 16 inch 80 foot tall tree, which is 34 bf. So if they were all that size it would take 3000 trees to get to 100MBF. think the cut and sold report may include firewood but I’m not sure if that’s on this table or not, if we’re trying to get at “timber industry” timber products.I guess it wouldn’t matter unless you want to track carbon impacts, and then what it is used for definitely does matter.
Also of interest is the lower value of 3424/141 =$24/MBF versus $66 per MBF on the Angeles or 1705/2230 $.76 on the Mendocino.
I’m hoping that someone out there will be able to interpret these numbers. I’m sure it all makes sense to those who watch these things regularly, but I need a Cut and Sold Report 101.
I already received this from an FS person on admin leave prior to retirement (thank you!)
“The calculator in the reference uses tree circumference, not diameter. For a tree with dbh=16 inches and merch height of 80 feet, the Doyle rule estimates around 720 bf and Scribner is around 831 bf. Doyle is used more often in the South while Scribner is more common in the West.”
It makes me think back to the Peoples’ Database.. maybe there is a way that things of interest to people currently as well as information important to people in the industry could both be collected and posted? Or maybe there should be a broader table:
Money collected from stuff that goes to Treasury
Permits – recreation, use of land, poles, firewood
ski areas
outfitter guides
cell towers
powerlines
Commercial timber sales..
Minerals .. goes to BLM but still from FS land.
Concessionaires
Money collected from stuff that goes to States, Counties, Tribes
Timber sales?
I wonder to what extent the current data collection and presentation methods are vestiges of older interests, thought patterns and computer systems and capabilities.
I love the People’s Database idea. So much of the data are out there and publicly available but in terrible formats (like pdfs) that limit analysis and/or are not described well to ensure they are used appropriately, like cut and sold reports.
I’ll respond separately to the questions posed on cut and sold reports, but wanted to make a few comments on the list you provided:
Money collected from stuff that goes to Treasury – in the case of the FS, the All Service Receipts Final Receipts Summary Report (ASR-04) Report describes receipts by Region, by Source (timber, grazing, recreation special uses, etc.) and FY, and how much goes to special funds like KV, timber salvage, etc.
The ASR 13-2 report provides the same information broken down by (proclaimed) national forest.
ASR 10-3 reports payments to states and counties through SRS, any special acts, and a calculation of what a county’s 25% revenue-sharing payment would be if SRS wasn’t in place (or if the county has opted to receive the 25% payment instead of SRS)
ASR 18-01 reports payments made to Counties through SRS broken down by Title.
The DOI’s FRD196 Report describes payments made through the Taylor Grazing Act by State, County and Fiscal Year.
The Office of Natural Resource Revenue (ONRR) provides data on revenue by state and commodity, including oil, gas and natural gas liquids, and the royalties paid to states.
Most of these reports are posted annually as pdfs making it difficult and time consuming to convert to tabular format for analysis. I have a lot of it tabulated for Idaho and one day will post it with some data visualizations!
Thanks Chelsea! Who knew? Well apparently you did….
As Sharon indicated in her comment, these reports are best understood as mechanisms for upward reporting, not a tool to support decision-making or analysis.
However, the information can be useful if you know what to look for.
My first peice of advice, if you are interested in the utilization side, is to always download the Forest-level report that breaks down timber sold and harvested by product. The reason for this is that it is important to remove any fuelwood volume from the mix as this is very rarely material that makes it out of the woods. Otherwise the product categories are not very useful as they represent material grouped by minimum rates and outdated merchandizing specifications.
Volume cut is a better measure than volume sold in part because the volume sold can be harvested over multiple years, or may not be harvested at all if the contractor defaults or it burns, etc.
Understanding the mix of products may provide some insights into the differences in value (i.e. did they sell mostly sawtimber or more low value material like biomass?), but as I understand it (and hopefully someone else weighs in with direct experience), the value is not very useful as it also reflects differences in contract terms that may include costs like road maintenance, the value of which would show up as a credit against timber value.
The sold volume: MBF is thousand board feet, CCF is one hundred cubic feet
Not sure how the cut volume is negative – my guess is an error in the reporting, perhaps they changed the fiscal year that it was to be declared.
Cut value becomes negative if the FS has to put up some money to get the project completed. This could be a stewardship contract where the FS is requiring more work to be done than the value of the timber being removed. The 3 forests showing negative are all high fire danger, and are probably getting a lot of fuel reduction completed. I know the Stanislaus is in the catgory.
Price paid for timber is based on the value at the mill, minus logging and haul costs, and minus any other work the FS wants done that is not directly related to the timber. Again, this could be fuels reductions, stream improvement, or ?????. Different tree species have different values so the mills pay a different price. Think black walnut with a very high value versus cottonwood which has no value. Since the mill pays different amounts, the value on the stump varies. If the logger has to haul a long distance the cost is more than a short distance – the cost per hour to haul is the same whether it is a high value or low value species.
Thanks,Norm!