Southern Forest Resource Assessment Consortium

Mission and Goals

The Southern Forest Resource Assessment Consortium (SOFAC) develops forest sector market models for application to forest resource assessments in the South, U.S., and the World. SOFAC modelers and members will be able to use the SOFAC suite of models and research to simultaneously project timber inventory, supply, and prices for a variety of regions and a variety of timber products across the South. SOFAC will continue cooperative university-industry-public agency cooperation in southern and national forest sector economic modeling, enhancing graduate instruction in forest economics and modeling.

Get the Latest News through our SOFAC Blog

• Febuary 22, 2023 – Demand growth and price responsiveness can influence inventory tipping points of high-grade white oak
• October 20, 2022 – Growing Stock vs. All-Live Inventory Data: Historical and Projected Trends
• July 22, 2022 – Changes in growing stock inventory data
• May 19, 2022 – TPO data: recent trends and county-level variation (white paper).
• November 8, 2021 – The relationship between mortgage rates and sawtimber prices.
• October 4, 2021 – An approach which can visualize the difference in market- and policy-driven changes in forest carbon sequestration over time.

2023 Annual Meeting

• The SOFAC 2023 annual meeting will be held on the Centennial Campus of NC State University on August 3 &4, 2023. Please save the date. Details will be coming later this spring.

2022 Annual Meeting

• The 2022 SOFAC annual meeting was held on August 9 & 10, 2022 in both in-person and Zoom formats. Click here for information about the meeting and a links to the speaker presentations.

Models

The core SOFAC modeling framework is the SubRegional Timber Supply (SRTS) Model, which is a bio-economic model that integrates forest inventory and analysis data and economic principles to estimate inventory, supply, demand, and price trends.

SOFAC integrates currently available forest resource data from the USDA Forest Service, Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) program and economic theory to model timber supply, demand, and prices in the South by local area; analyze the status of southern timber supply periodically; and analyze the impacts of new market and policy factors on timber supply.

Models that are linked to SRTS include modules that periodically collect and update the USDA Forest Service FIA data. Further, SRTS is linked to other economic frameworks that provide important data elements, including projections of:

• Land use change,
• Pine plantation responses to price changes,
• Timber demand and removals, and
• Climate impacts on forest productivity.

This suite of models is then used to project timber supply at the regional to local level under a range of economic and policy scenarios in the South, with occasional applications in the Northeast and Midwest.

In addition to SRTS, SOFAC affiliates work with a wide range of economic modeling tools, ranging from spatially explicit frameworks to global models of forest product markets and land use. These models include:

• The Global Timber Model (GTM)
• The US Forest and Agricultural Sector Optimization Model  (FASOM)
• The Land Use and Resource Allocation (LURA) Model
• The Global Biosphere Management Model (GLOBIOM)

SOFAC affiliates also perform timber investment and production economics studies are performed periodically with graduate students, including analysis of global timber investments, logging capacity, biomass harvesting contracts, and timber market structure.

Applications

SOFAC affiliates have completed recent studies on topics such as new forest products processing capacity or closures, growth and removal cycles, wood chip demand, bioenergy, wood pellets, and drivers of land use change. We are actively modeling the market and resource implications of using more roundwood for bioenergy (including the impact of state, federal, and EU policies); the effects of holding more sawtimber for longer periods; evaluating the effects of carbon policies on southern U.S. forests; and assessing the impacts of forest market structure on timberland investments.

Recent research efforts led by SOFAC faculty affiliates cover the following topics:

• Modeling southern forest futures
• Forest carbon management and policy analysis
• Forest bioenergy analysis and modeling
• Identifying hotspots for new forests and silvicultural investments
• Projecting global forest product trade flows
• Exploring interactions between forests and water resource management
• Modeling the potential implications of environmental change on forest management and markets.

People

Justin S. Baker, Director of SOFAC and Associate Professor of Forest Resource Economics

David Rossi, SOFAC Research Associate

Robert Abt, Principal SRTS Developer and Professor of Forest Economics

Kelley McCarter, SOFAC Meeting Coordinator

Graduate Students:

Gaurav Dhungel, NCSU FER

Madisen Fuller, NCSU FER

Olakunle Sodiya, NCSU FER

Recent Publications from SOFAC Affiliates

Dhungel, G., Rossi, D., Henderson, J., Abt, R., Sheffield, R., Baker, J. 2023. Critical market tipping points for high-grade white oak inventory decline in the central hardwoods regions of the United States. Journal of Forestry.

Baker, J., C. Van Houtven, J. Phelan, G. Latta, C. Clark, K. Austin, O. Sodiya, S. Ohrel, J. Buckley, L. Gentile, J. Martinich. 2023. Projecting U.S. forest management, market, and carbon sequestration responses to a high-impact climate scenario. Forest Policy and Economics 147: 102898.

Daigneault, A., Baker, J., Guo, J., Lauri, P., Favero, A., Forsell, N., Johnston, C., Ohrel, S., Sohngen, B. 2022. How the future of the global forest sink depends on timber demand, forest management, and carbon policies. Global Environmental Change 76: 102582.

Henderson, J., Abt, R., Abt, K., Baker, J., Sheffield, R. 2022. Impacts of hurricanes on forest markets and economic welfare: The case of hurricane Michael. Forest Policy and Economics 140: 102735.

Abt., R., Galik, C., Baker, J. S. 2022. When burning wood to generate energy makes climate sense. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. 78(3): 152-157.

Wade, C. M., Baker, J. S., Jones, J., Austin, K., Cai, Y., Bean de Hernandez, A., Latta, G., Ohrel, S., Ragnauth, S., Creason, J., McCarl, B. 2022. Projecting the impact of socioeconomic and policy factors on GHG emissions and mitigation potential in U.S. forestry and agriculture. Journal of Forest Economics. 37(1).

Rossi, D., Zhai, J., Kuusela, O.-P. 2021. Measuring the Value of Softwood Log Exports: Evidence from Oregon. Journal of Forestry 119(4): 351-362.

Austin, K., Baker, J. S., Sohngen, B. L., Wade, C., Ragnauth, S., Ohrel, S. 2020. The economic costs of planting, preserving, and managing the world’s forests for climate change mitigation. Nature Communications. 11(1): 1-9.

Henderson, J. D., Parajuli, R., Abt, R. C. 2020. Biological and market responses of pine forests in the US Southeast to carbon fertilization. Ecological Economics. Vol. 169.

Nepal, Prakash, Karen L Abt, Kenneth E Skog, Jeffrey P Prestemon, and Robert C Abt. 2019. Projected Market Competition for Wood Biomass between Traditional Products and Energy: A Simulated Interaction of US Regional, National, and Global Forest Product Markets. Forest Science 65 (1):14-26.