Robust management strategies promoting ecological resilience and economic efficiency of a mixed conifer-broadleaf forest in Southwest Germany under the risk of severe drought

Juan Carlos Zamora-Pereira, Marc Hanewinkel and Rasoul Yousefpour

Ecological Economics, 2023, vol. 209, issue C

Abstract: Robust decision-making in forestry seeks solutions that reduce the risk of environmental damage and economic losses, which matters for designing forest adaptation measures. We propose a state-of-the-art methodology to identify robust drought adaptive strategies. First, we used a process-based model with an ensemble of climate change scenarios to simulate managed forest dynamics. Second, we quantified the ecological resilience and financial return as net present value (NPV), applying business-as-usual (BAU) and alternative adaptation strategies to regenerate the overstorey layer (trees ≥ 30 cm dbh) of the forest (e.g., “active”, “reactive”, and “do-nothing”). Afterward, we analyzed robustness by searching for the strategy with minimum worst-case losses of ecological and economic signposts. Our analysis found a reduced forest drought resilience under BAU and “do-nothing” strategies, determining a high probability of economic failure (∼ −49% and ∼ −67% loss in NPV respectively). While, an early “active” strategy would increase the NPV (∼ +10%), and a highly-intense “reactive” strategy would have minimal losses (∼ −2%). Finally, we found that local conditions influence the signpost performance magnitude but do not vary the robust solution. We conclude that our methodology facilitates applying a robustness analysis in forestry, and drought adaptation should occur rather sooner than later, considering constant revision.

Keywords: Robustness analysis; Risk management; Ecological resilience; Economic efficiency; Adaptive management; Severe drought (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800923000885
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecolec:v:209:y:2023:i:c:s0921800923000885

DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2023.107825

Access Statistics for this article

Ecological Economics is currently edited by C. J. Cleveland

More articles in Ecological Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().