Inventory Updates

Investors in stocks and bonds can check the value of their assets at any tme.  Timberland investors should be able to do the same.  Unfortunately cost and geographic spread mean that most investors cannot inventory their timberland holdings annually.  Regardless, Smarter Forestry’s inventory update process takes the actual measured tree information from the latest inventory, including tree quality information, and uses that information along with growth models to estimate current value.  The vast majority of organizations who claim that they provide inventory updates do not use the inventory detail and thus have only an average value rather than value specific to each stand. 

Any inventory update process involves the use of growth models to estimate change over time.  With modern silviculture that should involve responses to treatments such as genetic improvement, herbaceous weed control, fertilization, and woody release where these treatments have been applied.  Barry Shiver has been at the forefront of this modeling since the 1980’s.  No one else in southern forestry has the combination of experience in inventory, growth and yield modeling, and southern pine silviculture to modify models as needed as new information on treatment response magnitude, timing, and duration becomes available.