When forestry companies view their standing resource as a separate business unit that must make a profit, or when stumpage (standing trees) must be purchased or sold to maximise profit, it is essential that a flexible and robust pre-harvest inventory system is used.
Marketing and sale options for forests products and their specifications can change daily or weekly so managers must be able to react to optimise the standing value of their forests. Inventory systems that make assumptions as to how stems will be processed do not allow flexibility of sale when the stems are being harvested. For instance a pre-harvest inventory system that collects an estimate of recoverable sawn timber does not allow managers to fully optimise the standing resource due to the inflexibility of directly comparing current pulpwood versus sawlog markets.
MARVL is a system that allows data to be collected and analysed for log production where the degree of flexibility is only limited to the type and number of measurements and observations of stem quality defined by the user and collected during the inventory cruise. During an inventory it is essential that a measure of piece size, stocking and stem quality is collected as all these factors together will indicate the viability of logging operations. Low quality stems, poorly stocked areas and small piece size stands will be more expensive to harvest.
If you are not collecting piece size, stocking and stem quality measurements during your inventory operations then it is recommended that an inventory method such as MARVL should be implemented to make the most of your inventory budget. Not collecting all of these stand attributes will be misleading for accurate management decisions.
Once flexible MARVL inventory data has been collected any number of cutting instruction variations can be analysed for purposes such as market analysis, harvest planning and resource allocation. Having such powerful and flexible data allows managers to maximise present forest value.
Article : Russell Judd – Resource Forester, Interpine Forestry