Slide 12 of 31
Notes:
Just because we might find a statistical link between a mill’s location and the age of the forest around it does not mean that the mill caused the forests to be older or younger than if no mill were nearby. Mill siting decisions are often based on the characteristics of the forest in a region. Finally, marketing efforts by wood procurement foresters may influence the probability to cut. The greater the number of mills, the greater the chance that a landowner will be approached and asked to sell timber, and even greater the chance that the price offered will be higher. So this kind of modeling exercise cannot determine the direction of causality between mill location and stand age or plantation probability. It does, however, identify topics and regions for further research and describe the magnitude and statistical significance of the link between mill location and observed forest conditions.
