The Economics of Forest Disturbances Wildfires, Storms and Invasive Species

About this book

This book provides a unique, state-of-the-art review of both traditional and emerging themes in the economics of natural forest disturbances. Although natural disturbances such as wildfire, hurricanes and pests have long been recognized as important factors influencing the structure and health of forests, recent and dramatic increases in the costs and damages associated with forest disturbances necessitates a new evaluation of these processes. The authors show that neo-classical economic principles can be integrated with ecosystem analysis and modern econometric methods to uncover the causes and consequences of natural forest disturbances.

The chapters encompass modern areas of concern in forest economics and policy, including temporal and spatial dynamics of economic-ecologic systems, risk-reducing mitigation and adaptation strategies, and the valuation of impacts on market and non-market resources. These topics are developed with case studies demonstrating rigorous empirical analysis with a policy-oriented focus. The book is intended for forest policy analysts and decision-makers, risk managers, forest economists and graduate students studying natural resource economics.

Contents

I. Economic-ecologic model. 1. Forest economics, natural disturbances and the new ecology.- 2. Natural disturbance production functions.- 3. Catastrophic wildfire risk analysis and extreme value theory.- 4. Large versus small wildfires ? what are the differences?.- 5. Long-term climate and wildfire relationships.- 6. Socio-economic conditions and wildland arson.- II. Economic impacts. 7. Public policy and natural disturbances.- 8. Accounting for the economic impacts of forest disturbances.- 9. Fighting fire with dollars: evaluating the costs of suppressing wildfire.- 10. Recreational impacts of wildfire.- 11. Property market impacts from wildfires and invasive species.- 12. Timber salvage economics.- 13. Contingent valuation of fuels hazard reduction.- III. Risk reduction strategies. 14. Management under natural resource production risk.- 15. Public and private strategies for managing invasive species risk.- 16. Economics of biomass removal.- 17. Regulating wildfire risk reduction strategies in the wildland-urban interface.- 18. Incentives and wildfire management in the United States. 19. Fuel treatment economics and optimal wildfire risk reduction. 20. Economics of the fire program analysis system.- 21. Collective action and cooperation for wildfire risk reduction.-

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