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U.S. Forest Service
Caring for the land and serving people

United States Department of Agriculture

Timber Cruising

A cruiser measuring a tree.

Cruising is the process of measuring forest stands to determine stand characteristics, such as average tree sizes, volume, and quality. The primary purpose of cruising is to obtain a volume estimation to appraise and prepare timber sales. We provide technical expertise in statistical sampling, measurement protocols, and volume estimation procedures. We provide cruising software, documents, training, and technical support.

The National Cruise System is a set of software tools developed for timber cruisers to design a timber cruise, collect timber cruise data, and produce statistically defensible volume estimates for timber sale contracts.

For all desktop cruise applications, Forest Service users should install using the Software Center application.

Current Software

The latest generation of cruising software, also know as Version 3 (V3) brings FScruiser's mobile data collection capabilities to the Android operating system. Version 3 uses a new file format (.crz3). Although some of the applications from the previous generation support both cruise file formats, the new version of FScruiser only supports the new file format. Users switching to Version 3 should wait until they are starting a new cruise to transition.

View the National Cruise System Introduction presentation: PDF, 198 KB, and/or PowerPoint (.pptx), 1.5MB.

Legacy Software

The legacy Version 2 (V2) software will continue to be supported while transitioning to V3 until December of 2023. Some of the applications that are also being used in V3, such as Cruise Processing and Cruise Design, will continue to be supported past that the end of V2 support.

https://www.fs.usda.gov/forestmanagement/products/measurement/cruising/index.shtml