David Rossi

Dec 21, 2023

Changes in hardwood volumes across the U.S. South following updated NSVB equations

by David Rossi and Ray Sheffield In a previous post, I highlighted recent updates to the FIA inventory estimation methodology on privately held pine timberlands in the U.S. South. In this post, I will highlight the impacts of this change in methodology on privately held hardwood timberlands, focusing on only Growth Stock estimates of inventory,… 

Dec 6, 2023

Changes in pine volumes across the U.S. South following updated NSVB equations

by David Rossi and Ray Sheffield In October, the U.S. Forest Service updated the FIA database to reflect their updated methodology for estimating merchantable forest inventory volume, biomass volume, and carbon storage (see Westfall et al., 2023). These new datasets provide a consistent methodology for estimating inventory volumes across different regions of the U.S., in… 

Oct 4, 2023

Timber utilization by size class across the U.S. South

While TPO data does not provide information on timber consumption by detailed sizes classes (for example, 1” delineations of roundwood use), the TPO database does breakout timber utilization across broader product specifications. Specifically, the TPO database defines “poletimber” as 5-9” DBH roundwood (for pines) and as 5-11” DBH roundwood (for hardwoods). The “sawtimber” product represents… 

Oct 20, 2022

Growing Stock vs. All-Live Inventory Data: Historical and Projected Trends

By David Rossi There are several different definitions of merchantable volume in the historical FIA data. Analysts examining inventory trends need to be cautious about which definitions of inventory were used to make a market projection and how projected inventory lines up with historical data. The three definitions of merchantable volume are: Growing stock sawtimber… 

Jul 22, 2022

Changes in growing stock inventory data – v36a .INV files

By David Rossi and Ray Sheffield SRTS requires a static picture of forest inventory, growth, and removals to make a forward-looking projection. Our latest pull of the U.S. Forest Service Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) data reveals that this static picture has changed for 10 states across the U.S. South. We summarize here how forest… 

May 19, 2022

TPO Data – Recent Trends and County-level Variation

Click here to download a SOFAC white paper on county-level TPO data. 

Nov 8, 2021

How do mortgage rates affect sawtimber prices?

While it is well understood that housing market activity is a key factor in determining the demand for framing lumber (and hence the demand for sawtimber [1]), there are several macroeconomic factors that contribute to the demand for housing. Of these factors, the price of home loans is potentially one of the most important. All…