Harvest Scheduling

American Forest Management develops harvest schedules using a proprietary program called Searcher™, which was developed by AFM. Searcher™ uses a simulation approach to determine the optimal harvest schedule, within the constraints imposed by various assumptions regarding prices, costs, and forest productivity, specified for each analysis. Each analysis will generate an “optimal” solution: multiple runs are necessary to test for optimality across various sets of assumptions.

AFM’s guiding objective in developing a harvest schedule is to maximize the Net Present Value (NPV) – over one rotation – for each individual stand of timber within a single ownership.

The age for each stand at which NPV is maximized is identified as the optimal year in which the stand should be cut. Once this optimal (”unrestricted”) solution is identified for all stands, ownership-wide constraints on annual harvest levels are incorporated to develop a constrained or “restricted” solution. Under the restricted solution, harvesting some stands will be delayed past the optimal period, thus reducing returns.

During the modeling process, several silvicultural regimes will be applied to maximize the NPV. These include thinning, fertilization, and herbaceous weed control. The completion of the scheduling process includes production of various reports for budgeting and planning. These include a summary report containing a roll-up of all the scheduled activities and financial analyses and stand level reports for fertilization, thinning and final harvest. Maps for each activity are produced to provide field managers and planners with a landscape level view of the various activities scheduled over time.

Currently, AFM provides harvest scheduling and management planning services for over 750,000 acres of land owned by institutional and private investors throughout the south.

Silvicultural Planning, Budgeting and Tracking

Currently, AFM’s silvicultural planning process consists of utilizing Searcher™ to produce an acceptable harvest regime for the desired property. This regime consists of the reports and maps produced during the planning process for utilization in budgeting.

Operational budgets are created on an annual basis and presented during a planning meeting. Landscape activities are forecast using reports and maps. After the budget is approved, it is then used as the guide for all activities during the operational year. Monthly (or quarterly) reports are generated to track the variance between budget and actual for all activities.

After the completion of an activity, the information is entered in Cypress™ where it is then stored for the life of the stand. This information can then be used for tracking activities, production and costs at the stand level.


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