Premium
Influencing Natural Forest Disturbance through Timber Harvesting: Tradeoffs among Disturbance Processes, Forest Values, and Timber Condition
Author(s) -
Sims Charles
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
american journal of agricultural economics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.949
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1467-8276
pISSN - 0002-9092
DOI - 10.1093/ajae/aat008
Subject(s) - disturbance (geology) , subsidy , salvage logging , forest management , incentive , margin (machine learning) , environmental science , environmental resource management , natural resource economics , business , ecology , agroforestry , economics , forest ecology , computer science , ecosystem , paleontology , machine learning , market economy , biology , microeconomics
Governments provide technical, political, and financial incentives to encourage timber harvesting for the purpose of mitigating natural forest disturbance. To provide guidance concerning these incentives, this paper integrates a natural disturbance regime into a dynamic model of forest management. The model is used to estimate live and salvage timber harvest subsidies needed to incorporate disturbance‐mitigating benefits before and after three types of natural disturbance: insect outbreak, storm, and wildfire. While not specific to a particular country or state, results indicate that the degree of forest mortality may be a poor metric for gauging management response due to various degrees of endogeneity across different types of disturbance events. The live timber harvesting subsidy is substantial but quickly declines after a disturbance event. In contrast, salvage subsidies increase following a disturbance event but remain modest.