Data dictionary

Terms, defined once

Every statistic and term Stumpage uses, defined in one place. Receipts and page copy link here rather than restating a definition. For how the record is built, see Methodology.

Weighted average price#: also written VWAP; The price of one species × product × unit in one region and period, from the Michigan DNR’s stumpage price report: the sum of each reported line’s average sold price times its volume, divided by the total volume. A line is a row of the DNR’s report; lines withheld as implausible (see below) are not in it. The headline figure on species, region and market pages.
A stumpage price#: What a buyer paid for standing timber, per unit of wood, before it was cut. Every price on Stumpage carries the unit it sold in — $/MBF for sawtimber, $/cord for pulpwood — and is never converted to another unit.
Sawtimber#: called Sawlogs in reports before 2017; Standing trees big enough and sound enough to be sawn into boards. It is sold by the MBF — a thousand board feet, measured under a log rule — and it is the higher-value product on almost every sale. The DNR called this product Sawlogs until a 2017 renaming; Stumpage shows both spellings under one filter and never merges their prices with pulpwood’s.
Pulpwood#: includes the DNR’s Chip Pulp; Smaller, lower-grade or crooked wood, sold to be chipped for paper, board or fuel rather than sawn. It is sold by the cord — a stacked measure — or by the ton, never by the MBF. A stand usually yields both sawtimber and pulpwood, and their prices are reported and shown separately because they are different products in different units.
Cord equivalent#: printed “cd eq.” on the DNR’s For-sale list; The DNR’s own aggregate of a sale’s MBF of sawtimber and its cords of pulpwood, expressed as one cord figure, shown on its For-sale list exactly as the DNR prints it. This is the one place in the product where two units are combined, and the DNR does the combining, on its own sheet: Stumpage never computes a cord equivalent and never converts a price from one unit to another. Read it as the DNR’s rough measure of a sale’s total size, never as a price basis.
Median sale price#: The middle reported sale price — one sale, one vote — in a defined group. With an even count, the median is the mean of the two middle values. Sale size does not give a transaction more votes. A regional result can contain one explicitly consented sale, in which case the median is that sale’s reported price. Always read the sample count, period, native unit and pricing basis; a small sample does not establish a market price.
Michigan Timber Index#: A Laspeyres index of Michigan DNR state-land stumpage prices, one for sawtimber and one for pulpwood, never combined. A fixed basket of species is priced every quarter and compared with its cost in the base window, which equals 100. Dimensionless: an index point is not a dollar. See Methodology for the basket and base window.
Prices vs. inflation#: The Michigan Timber Index by calendar year drawn beside Midwest consumer prices (BLS CPI-U, CUUR0200SA0, not seasonally adjusted), both set to 100 in the first year of the window shown. The published index value (base window = 100) travels with every point. A year’s CPI is the mean of its published months, at least 11 of 12, with the count stated; fewer is a gap. One product at a time; an index, not a price.
Inflation-adjusted timber index#: The Michigan Timber Index divided by the change in consumer prices: real = nominal ÷ (CPI ÷ CPI reference), with CPI the year’s mean of the monthly BLS CPI-U values for the Midwest region and the reference the mean of the published monthly values across the index base window. Expressed at base-window price levels; a missing CPI year is a gap. Still an index, not a price, and one product at a time.
Market context line#: An external or DNR-auction series drawn beside the timber index for comparison, averaged by calendar year and set to 100 in the same first year as the index lines — only when it has a value in that year. Sharing the axis does not mean sharing units; raw values and units stay in the tooltip and table. A headwind series (diesel, no-bid share) is drawn as-is, never inverted. Co-movement does not prove causation.
Volume sold (as appraised)#: The DNR’s estimate of the wood on a sale at the time it was sold, in the unit of sale. It is not scaled harvest and is never called “harvested”. A calendar-year figure is the DNR’s own January–December window; quarters are the three-month rows. MBF and cords are never added together.
Premium over minimum#: called “premium over asking” in earlier receipts; On a sold sale, the winning bid total divided by the advertised total, minus one — how far above the DNR’s advertised minimum the whole sale went. The advertised total is a minimum a bid must clear, not an asking price a seller hopes for. A whole-sale measure, so it is unaffected by how a bidder spread the total across species.
No-bid sale#: A sale offered at a bid opening that received no bids. It stays on the DNR’s unsold list, purchasable at the advertised price, until it sells or is re-offered. No-bid sales count as offered, never as sold, and never contribute a price.
Re-offer#: The same sale number brought back to a later bid opening, usually at a lower advertised value after drawing no bids. Stumpage chains offerings by sale number so a sale’s whole history reads as one record.
The former three-sale floor#: The earlier contributor agreement allowed publication only in aggregates supported by at least three sales. That permission has not been broadened automatically. Earlier submissions are held out of the regional record unless their contributor explicitly accepts the regional publication agreement for each sale.
Regional publication agreement#: A separate agreement accepted for each contributed sale permits publication in the Upper Peninsula, Northern Lower Peninsula or Southern Michigan. A result can represent one sale, with its count shown. Names and precise locations are not published, but anonymity cannot be guaranteed: someone with outside knowledge may recognize a transaction. A county label on the map identifies its reporting region, not the location of a sale.
Lump-sum sale#: Standing timber sold for an agreed contract amount. A buyer may also supply prices for individual species. The contribution form records species volumes and any known species prices for both lump-sum and scaled sales; a whole-sale total is required if any species price is unknown. Stumpage keeps reported whole-sale totals separate from species prices and never allocates a payment among species to fill missing prices.
Private oak reporting groups#: Contributed oak entries use the White Oak group or Red Oak group. Record a subtype when known: Bur Oak and Swamp White Oak, for example, belong to the White Oak group; Black Oak and Northern Red Oak belong to the Red Oak group. The contributor’s entry retains that detail, while overall private price results combine matching entries within the parent group. Each sale still has one vote. Leave the subtype unrecorded when it is unknown; an oak entry with an unknown group remains separate as Mixed Oak.
Volume basis#: How the quantity behind a price was established: for example, a standing timber estimate or a measured harvested quantity. A cruise estimates volume from tree measurements or sampling; a delivered scale measures a different stage of the transaction. Keep the reported basis and log rule visible. An unknown basis stays unknown; Stumpage applies no blanket adjustment between them.
An accepted sale#: A submitted private sale that passed the entry checks, is still on the record and has not been rejected. Accepted is not verified: entry checks do not independently verify a deed, contract or scale ticket. Publication also requires the agreement applicable to that sale. Accepted sales earn contributor renewal credit under the stated offer; accepting a sale does not guarantee its publication. A sale that is later rejected stays in the contributor’s own ledger, marked, and counts nowhere published.
Grade 2 or higher · Pallet/bolt/scrag#: An optional category for contributed sawtimber prices. Grade 2 or higher is sawtimber sold for lumber or veneer at grade 2 and better. Pallet/bolt/scrag is low-grade sawtimber sold for pallet stock, bolts or a scrag mill. Leave grade blank when it was not recorded. Those prices appear separately as Grade not recorded; they are never combined with either known grade. Pulpwood carries no grade. Use the category the sale was actually sold under; Stumpage never assigns one.
The correction window#: The fourteen days after a sale is submitted, during which the contributor can correct it themselves — unless Stumpage has rejected the sale, which ends that window. After that the sale stands as filed and a correction goes through a change request instead: the contributor writes what should be different, and Stumpage decides within fourteen days. A removal can be asked for at any time. Changes after the correction window require review because they can affect previously published results.
Withheld as implausible#: A reported line whose price is impossible for its product and unit (a typo in the source, such as a cord price entered where an MBF price belongs), self-contradictory, or in a unit that cannot exist for the product. Withheld from every published aggregate; kept in the raw record, flagged; counted on every receipt. Never excluded on statistics alone.
Gaps#: A gap means no usable price is available for that species and period. Possible causes include no reported sales, missing source coverage or excluded observations. It does not necessarily mean no timber sold. Missing prices are not estimated.
Informative, never advisory#: Every page describes what the record shows — what sold, for how much, who bid. No page says what a sale is worth, what to bid, or whether to wait. The record is a description, not an appraisal and not advice.
MBF, board feet, cords, tons, log rules#: MBF is a thousand board feet of sawtimber. A board foot is a piece of wood a foot square and an inch thick; how many a standing tree holds is estimated with a log rule — a published table that turns a log’s small-end diameter and length into board feet. Rules disagree about the same log, so a price under one is never compared to another: the DNR reports Scribner Decimal C, and private sales may use Doyle or International ¼″. A cord is a stacked measure of pulpwood (128 cubic feet); tons are weight. None converts to another.
DNR regions and the DNR fiscal year#: The price report resolves to the state, two DNR regions (the Upper Peninsula and the northern Lower Peninsula), six state forests and seventeen management units — all state forest land, all of it northern. The bid record adds every DNR office, including southern Lower Peninsula sales on Wildlife Division land the price report does not cover. The DNR fiscal year runs 1 October to 30 September and is named for the year it ends.
Price-report restatement of bids#: Since 2017 the DNR rebalances a winning bid whose species prices were skewed — an over-bid line is reduced and every other line on the sale raised by one factor, the sale total unchanged — before the contract and the price report. So the price report’s species price is the contract price, and the bid record’s is what was bid. Stumpage shows each under its own source and never blends them; the price report stays the species price everywhere.
Field note#: The short public note Stumpage publishes when each quarterly MI DNR stumpage price report lands — the report’s longer windows reach further back, and the note is quarterly: which way the Michigan Timber Index moved, which species moved with it, how many management units and species reported, and how the quarter’s state timber sales went. It carries directions and counts only — never a price. The figures behind every line are in the record; every edition is on Field notes.
Receipt#: The page behind a published figure: the DNR document it came from (URL, fetch date, SHA-256 fingerprint), how many lines were used and withheld, the statistic’s definition, and a citation. Each receipt link identifies a statistic and reporting period. DNR results and source information are public; underlying rows and calculations require a subscription. Contributed receipts require Pro and show aggregates only.