ABSTRACT
Harvesting economics research offers many opportunities for large improvements in efficiencies and profits of firms of all sizes. The market costs of wood procurement and timber harvesting often exceed the actual costs of growing wood. Research pertaining to timber harvesting, forest engineering, and wood procurement focuses mostly on the development and testing of various harvesting and road-building equipment. The greatest amount of timber harvesting research has focused on development of production functions — underlying input-output relationships. Timber harvesting research has attempted to improve field methods and techniques for timber harvesting and forest engineering. Production functions are the underlying relationships among inputs of terrain, trees, employees, equipment, capital, managers, and other factors that determine the type and level of output from timber harvesting. Production functions are the bases for harvesting cost estimation. Improvement of timber harvesting methods can be an especially important area of research.
