VARDAMAN VIRTUAL FORESTRY COMPANY

The Most Direct Link to Knowledge Workers in the Southeast Forest Economy

"...LEV IS AT A MAXIMUM AT 300 STEMS PER ACRE AND DECREASES WITH INCREASING DENSITY."

Although we at JMV&CO have stated this fact thousands of times, the words in the headline are not ours. They are quoted from and an article in a referred scientific publication, "Southern Journal of Applied Forestry," published by the Society of American Foresters, Authors of the article, "The Price-Size Curve and Planting Density Decisions," are three professors in the School of Forestry at Auburn University: Jon Caulfield, forest economist, David B. South, nursery management and regeneration specialist, and Greg Somers, biometrician. "LEV" stands for Land Expectation Value; we use "BLV" for Bare Land Value. Dollar figures supporting the table appear in Table 1.

The article is must reading for anyone planning to regenerate a forest, especially private landowners who grow timber to sell on the open market, and several things about it are noteworthy. The words missing from the headline as indicated by the three dots are, "For the marshall, Consultant (JMV&CO), and TMS price-size curves." A positively-sloped price-size curve is one that rises as it moves across the graph to the right; it indicates that a cubic foot of wood rises in value as the size of the tree containing it increases, e.g., ten-inch pulpwood trees are worth more per cord than six-inch pulpwood trees.

This isn't exactly news. It was preached as gospel by Prof. Donald Matthews at the University of Michigan when Jim Vardaman went there in 1940. It was part of the skills of all pulpwood cutters in the 1940's and 1950's who felled and bucked trees with a Sandvik bow saw and loaded bob trucks by hand; they hunted up all the big trees and, where possible, dodged all the little trees. It appeared often in Jim Vardaman's book and these newsletters. The reasons behind it are bigger trees are cheaper to log and can be made into more valuable products. We emphasize it only because this is one of the few times that price-size curves similar to those in the real-world markets have been used in a scientific journal.

In the article, the Company price-size curve is almost horizontal. We think that it fails to match reality, but when the Company wants our advice, it will ask for it. Private landowners who use such a curve are certain to make bad investment decisions.

Here is the second noteworthy point: "For densities ranging from 300 to 1,000 trees per acre, the effect of density on know size is relatively small compared to the densities in the 100 to 300 tpa range." We can provide visual proof of this. Our videotape of the Leland Speed Plantation shows the trees at age ten with white paper circles 2.5 inches in diameter tacked on them for comparison.

Point three is revealed in Table 4 showing the percentage of basal area in juvenile wood for trees at various ages and planting densities. At all ages from 22 through 31, the smallest percentage of basal area in juvenile wood was found in trees planted at 300 per acre. Although these young trees contained lots of juvenile wood, they were so much larger than trees planted at 600 and 900 per acre that their juvenile core was a smaller percentage.

In spite of frequent and long-continued ridicule and criticism by foresters of every stripe, JMV&CO has been recommending much lower-than-usual densities for decades; we are still searching for the earliest proposal containing them, but the Leland Speed Plantation is now into its 12th growing season. We believe that we alone have earned the right to wear this feather in our cap.

But to us the important thing is that this concept is only one part of the Vardaman Revolution in Forest Management. Equally important are PTAEDA2V+ECONV and the Vardaman 1990 Hypothesis, which are currently getting their share of ridicule and criticism. We predict that their true value will ultimately be recognized and that those who employ them in managing timberland will laugh all the way to the bank.