How do I calculate this?

[Tillaway]

It just seems like allot of hassle for timber you are growing for yourself.  Is it on your own land?  Its kind of like a company buying thier own helicopter, leasing it a flight service, and then leasing it back from the flight service.  I never could figure that one out.

[crtreedude]

Look at it this way - I own the land, but to grow good trees requires a lot of money - especially some of the trees I am growing. The larger the operation, the less things cost per tree. I could easily plant let's say 100 acres, but we now have 240 acres, and growing. Now, you know as well as I that selling lumber makes money just like growing trees. If I have access to really good trees in the future for lumber, furniture, etc - it means that I can afford to invest in trucks, sawmills, tools for furniture, stores because of economies of scale.

If I had millions - perhaps I would do it the other way - but this is working very well for me.

Also, my final goal is not just to make money, but to return as much as land I can back to rainforest - 70% of Costa Rica is deforested and the land is unstable because of it. The more trees I sell, the more land is returned. Eventually it will end up being a managed forest instead of a plantation. Given the scarcity of the native trees now - I feel the natives will have much more value than the plantation trees in the future.

If all I wanted to do was make the most money possible, there are easier ways - I am in software after all and get paid very well for it. No, this is an attempt to make it possible for the small investor to diversify into tropical hardwoods as well as return land back to rainforest by using one cycle of plantation trees.

It might not be the best business decision as far as how to put the most money in my pocket - but frankly, I am not that greedy. As long as it works, I am happy - and it is.

Besides, people pay me to take care of their trees and I buy more land to do so from the money they pay me. So, it isn't like I am consuming my land.  My land is the seed capital.

[SwampDonkey]

I don't know what you came up with Fred, but here are some screen shots from my hand held GPS software, Arpad 7.01.



Outline of my woodlot in green, with green diamonds representing red oak I have found.



Maps can be rotated, notice the north arrow direction compared to the previous picture.



GPSCorrect extension used to collect positions to be post processed in PathFinder Office for increased accuracy.



Satellite sky plot window, no current fix. This window shows the position of satellites in the sky. You don't see any at the moment since the GPS is indoors.



Edit mode with stand boundaries labeled with area (ha).



Geography of my woodlot, length and area (metric). This can be changed to imperial units. Note there are no Z values since this was a 2D shapefile that does not collect elevation (Height above Elipsoid actually).

Generating contours (in metres) in my GIS program (Matitude 4.6)



The imported Geography text file with long, lat, elev.



Generated contours with labeled intervals (10 m)



Contour layer overlaid onto Orthophoto layer.