Where is there enough standing timber, within hauling distance of a mill that can process it, to supply a product buyers are actually asking for? That question has shaped the U.S. forest economy for decades.

Today it looks more like this: Where is there enough fiber from trees of a given diameter, in stands hit by recent drought and disease mortality, with the lignin content an emerging bio-based product requires, close enough to keep diesel haul costs down, and within reach of an idle facility that could be retrofitted to process it?

For landowners deciding how to manage forests, companies deciding where to build or reopen a mill, and investors deciding what to fund, answering that question still means assembling forest, mill, and market information by hand, from sources that were never designed to talk to each other.

This month, the U.S. Endowment for Forestry and Communities announced a $300,000 grant to CTrees (opens in a new tab) to build that missing connection. CTrees will develop a digital system, Forest Asset Intelligence: The Wood Triangle, that brings together information on forests, mills, and markets to empower a wider group of stakeholders to develop innovative plans for healthy and resilient forests and rural economies.

Recent decades have seen a contraction in the U.S. forest industry and wood-based product output, with mills and factories for finished products closing across the country. At the same time, forest managers have faced new ecosystem health stressors, including increasing wildfire severity, and widespread mortality due to insects and disease effects. While the difficulties for industry and forest health are inter-related, digital systems to measure and analyze change have long existed in separate silos.

CTrees aims to bridge the gap between ecological, market, and manufacturing data, with a shared data architecture that includes high-resolution geospatial information on forest conditions, industry capacity by region, and emerging markets and product specifications built to common standards so the three can be queried together, whether by an analyst, a planning tool, or an AI agent. By reading and connecting the diverse information streams, the data can underpin operational dashboards for a wider set of users beyond just forest managers.

“These data ecosystems have never been linked before. We're not building another dashboard. We're building the architecture and standards underneath, so any person or AI system can ask questions across forests, mills, and markets using transparent public data. Emerging wood-product markets need that transparency to grow, and they need verification of what forests provide.” said Chris Woodall, director of U.S. forest science and policy at CTrees, and lead for the project.

The Endowment also awarded Spatial Informatics Group a grant to help planners consider the economics of treatments that improve forest health.

“Healthy forests and strong rural communities depend on practical tools that help people make better decisions and respond to changing conditions on the ground. These projects demonstrate how technology can strengthen forest management capacity, improve connections between forests and markets and create lasting value for working forests and communities.” said (opens in a new tab) Teal Edelen, director of forests for the Endowment.

Work is already underway on the project foundation: a national, tree-level map of U.S. forest conditions. Over the next two years, CTrees will connect that forest layer to mill and market information in three pilot regions: the Southeast (Alabama, George, and South Carolina), the West (California and Oregon), and the Northeast (Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont) with partners including the Sustainable Forestry Initiative, Wood Works, American Forests, and Clemson University's Wood Utilization + Design Institute.

The grant builds on CTrees’ work this year to produce operational data and insights for forest management in the U.S.:

Interested in partnering with CTrees on forest intelligence technology? Please reach out via our contact form.