Species is of major interest when deciding on the area to harvest, because different species have different economic values. According to Forest Land and Cut Timber Values Regulation Schedule C published in 2005, we can deduce that cedar has the highest economic value per cubic meter, thus the most wanted species for harvesting.

For the objective of this project, we assumed all timber harvested from our land base are ungraded. Besides, hardwood is not considered valuable in our case, therefore we excluded them from this analysis (vacant areas) along with unidentified species.

We ranked the tree species that occurred in our AOI by their market values and assigned weight (5 – 1, higher number indicates higher priority in timber harvesting) to each tree species. As can be concluded from the table above: Cedar (5) has the highest market value and therefore is our first choice for timber harvesting, followed by Douglas-Fir (4) and Spruce (3). Fir (2) comes fourth in value while Pine (1) is marked as the least preferred species for its low market value.

Here is what the species distribution looks like in our area of interest:

 As can be seen in the map, darker red represents a more preferred species (with higher market value).