Methodology
How guidance is produced, how the tools reach their answers, and what has to be true before a claim appears on this site.
What kind of statement is this?
Three different kinds of statement appear on this site, and they carry different weight. Anyone citing this material should know which one they are quoting.
| Kind | What it is | Example | How to cite it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Authoritative fact | Attributed to a named external authority, registered before use. | Which agency administers erosion and sediment control in a state. | Cite the original authority. This site is the index, not the source. |
| General guidance | Editorial judgement about how clearing work is usually scoped and bought. | That end use decides the answers to the four gates before it. | Attributable to Land Clearing Authority. States what changes it. |
| Modeled estimate | Produced by a published rule set against a stated reference project. Not observed pricing. | The multiplier range a factor applies on the cost estimator. | Quote with the reference project and the rule, never as a market price. |
The scope this covers
Counted from the registries the build validates against rather than described, so these figures cannot drift from the thing they describe: 55 registered sources across 55 distinct publishers, 13 state resource centres naming the authorities that govern clearing questions locally, and 250 published routes. Coverage is concentrated in the markets this site publishes rather than spread thinly across every state, and the markets are named rather than implied.
The framework everything is organised around
Every page on this site exists to advance one of five decisions. A page that does not is not a page; it is a topic, and topics are how a resource ends up with two hundred articles that nobody can act on.
How the tools work
A planning tool that scores privately is indistinguishable from one that makes its answers up. So an engine here is not a function with a switch statement inside it — it is a declared, ordered list of rules, and each rule carries the plain-language sentence shown to you when it fires.
The consequences are enforced in code rather than left to review:
- A rule with no explanation cannot be registered — the validator rejects it
- The methodology section reads from the same array the engine evaluates, so there is no second copy to drift
- Every published rule must be reachable, and the test suite proves it with fixtures
- Incomplete input produces no result at all, rather than a confident answer built on blanks
- Every tool publishes its limitations, and the list can never be empty
| Tool | Published rules | Published limitations |
|---|---|---|
| Contractor-type selector | 20 | 5 |
| Mulch-or-haul decision tool | 12 | 5 |
| Land clearing cost estimator | 22 | 5 |
| Site access checker | 17 | 5 |
| Quote comparison tool | 19 | 5 |
Why there are no prices
Publishing a dollar-per-acre figure would be the single easiest way to attract traffic to a site like this. It would also be invented. We have not seen your land, do not know your local disposal fee, and have collected no local price data — the dataset that would justify it is registered on this site and holds zero observations.
The cost estimator instead shows complexity against a stated reference project, with every multiplier published, and prints the one question to ask three local contractors. That is less satisfying and considerably more useful.
What has to be true before a claim appears
- It resolves a decision a landowner actually faces
- It is true generally, or it states plainly what changes it
- Where it depends on jurisdiction, it names the authority instead of guessing
- Where it depends on the parcel, it says so rather than implying otherwise
- It does not assert anything about a specific property, contractor, or permit
Sources
Every external authority is registered once, with the claims it is allowed to support and the routes permitted to cite it. A page citing a source for a claim it was never registered to support fails the build. See the registry and what its verification statuses mean.
Research
Datasets declare provenance, methodology, minimum sample size, and limitations before collection opens. No result is published below the declared minimum, and no synthetic observation may ever be added. Read the research methodology.
If you are checking this before citing it
Start with the source registry, which lists every external authority and what each is registered to support. For the decision framework itself, the five gates is the structure the tools implement. For how cost is treated without publishing prices, see what actually drives the cost. Where a question turns on a specific state, the state resource centres name the agencies rather than restating their requirements.
Corrections
Corrections are made in place and recorded in the revision log with the date and what changed. A correction is never made silently, and a page that has been corrected keeps the record.
Corrections policy and full revision log →
Questions people ask before citing this
Can I cite this site as a source?
For general guidance about how clearing work is scoped and bought, yes, with attribution. For anything attributed to an external authority, cite that authority directly — this site registers and indexes them rather than replacing them. For any number produced by a tool here, cite it as a modeled estimate against the stated reference project, never as an observed market price.
Why does this site publish no prices?
Because it has no observed pricing dataset, and publishing a per-acre figure without one is guessing with a decimal point on it. The cost work instead publishes every multiplier it applies, states the reference project those multipliers are measured against, and prints the questions that make a local quote comparable.
Who decides what is on a page?
Every claim has to resolve a decision a landowner actually faces, be true generally or state what changes it, and name the responsible authority wherever it depends on jurisdiction. Where it depends on a specific parcel it says so. Sources are registered once, with the claims they are permitted to support — a page citing a source for a claim it was never registered to support fails the build rather than shipping.
What does this site deliberately not answer?
Permits, wetlands, protected species, burn availability, boundary lines, utility locations, slope stability, equipment safety, and whether any given contractor is licensed or insured. Each is a determination about a specific property or company that a qualified person has to make. This site names who that is and links to them.
How current is any of this?
Every page carries a visible last-revised date and a link to the corrections policy and full revision log. Regulatory detail below state level changes without notice, which is why this site names authorities rather than restating their requirements.