A Technique for Merging Areas in Timber Mart-South Data

For over20 yr, Timber-Mart-South (TMS) has been distributing prices of various woodproducts from southern forests. In the beginning of 1988, the reporting frequency changed from monthly to quarterly, a change readily addressed through a variety of established statistical techniques. A more significant statistical challenge is Timber Mart-South's change in 1992 from (typically) three reporting regions per state to two. We developed a conversion technique to address this change in reporting areas, permitting longitudinal analyses of the current two regionsperstate but extending back to the beginning of Timber Mart-South's reports in 1976. We report conversion factors for every state's regions, verify the statistical nature of all time series created using them, and report tests of seamlessness. We find that our technique enables the creation of new, seamless series for pine sawtimber stumpage and delivered sawlogs, and pine and hardwood pulpwood stumpage and delivered logs. In only 30 out of 126 cases were we able to identify remaining regime shifts in the time-series of quarterly prices that corresponded with the 1992 boundary reconfigurations. However, these statistically significant shifts may not be related to the boundary reconfgurations. South. J. Appl. For. 24(4):219-229.