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FORSight applies high-tech to land stewardship
By Shelia Watson
Contributing Writer
Greg Day, vice president of geographic information systems and data services for FORSight Resources, describes the company as being at the intersection of old and new. Using the latest high-tech advances, the private consulting firm provides expertise for natural resource management.
Or as Day puts it, “we’re using some highly advanced resources to help the forest industry manage the property.”
To the layperson, the forestry industry is about taking care of trees. For the Charleston-based company, it’s about stewardship of the land, and according to Day, FORSight provides modern applications to manage it properly.
Although the company was formed two years ago, the staff is made up completely of former employees of the Forest Technology Group, a subsidiary of MeadWestvaco. When FTG reorganized to concentrate on Web-based forestry information systems, nine former employees of FTG’s consulting services group started the new venture.
The company’s offerings are extensive and include forest planning, inventory, growth and yield modeling, GIS analysis and custom programming, acquisition due diligence, wood supply analysis, forest finance, forest economics, and a host of other decision support services geared toward natural resource management.
“When you look at a forest, you look at inventories, storing land records, analysis such as maximizing a return on investment over a 20-, 30-, 40-, 50-year period,” Day said. “We develop models to help determine strategies for managing properties as umbrellas and models to see what stands to harvest to meet the criteria.”
The criteria may consist of a number of things, Day said.
“The criteria can be maximizing revenue, or you may want to manage the property to protect endangered species,” he said. “Often there’s a trade-off between maximizing cash flow and the measure of environmental caring capacity. But there are a lot of different measures for quality of environment in addition to incorporating financial models.”
Among FORSight’s high-tech tools are geographic information systems, which Day noted go far beyond just mapping.
“It’s becoming business-critical technology,” he said. “Remote sensing and data acquisition are valuable in terms of management of forest land.”
For instance, image analysis can show damage from ice storms or hurricanes as well as targeting areas where foresters need to visit for more in-depth analysis.
Another tool is biometrics, which Day refers to as “forced statistics.”
“We have statistical mathematicians, with both academic and practical experience, who can do yield model development and implementation as well as inventory design and harvest scheduling.”
FORSight develops software to show growth and yield using samples of trees, growing them to certain point and then using the modeling process to predict the best time for harvest. Day pointed to it as quality technical work with common- sense techniques.
Consulting in acquisitions and divestitures is all about finding the value in the property determined by how the client measures success, Day said.
“We look at risk assessment and market analysis so there are no surprises for the client,” he said. “In today’s economy you have to maximize your return or you won’t be able to afford those properties.”
FORSight serves a client base throughout the United States and Canada. Clients range from small landowners to those with family trusts owning 30,000 to 50,000 acres. Market sectors include timber investment management organizations, real estate investment trusts, integrated forest products companies, state and federal governmental agencies, non-industrial private forest interests and non-government organizations.
The company is headquartered in Charleston with branch offices in Vancouver, Wash., and Bangor, Maine.
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