 Pricing ecosystem resilience in frequent-fire ponderosa pine forestsTong Wu and Yeon-Su Kim Forest Policy and Economics, 2013, vol. 27, issue C, 8-12 Abstract: Dry forests across the United States have become subject to declining resilience and, consequently, increased vulnerability to catastrophic wildfires. These disturbances cause severe environmental and social damages and may dislodge the forest into a different ecological regime. Forests provide many valuable services, such as the provisioning of timber and the sequestering of carbon that would otherwise contribute to climate change. The high-severity conflagrations that have become regular occurrences in many dry forests impinge the delivery of such benefits, particularly in the event of a regime shift. Sustainable forest management should take these risks into account. This article analyzes the economics of resilience in dry forests with respect to catastrophic fires and ecological thresholds. We illustrate how to price ecosystem resilience for the fire-prone ponderosa pine forests of the western United States. This analysis demonstrates that pricing forest resilience also establishes the economic value of ecological restoration with respect to ecosystem services, thereby operationalizing forest management as an investment in natural capital. Keywords: Resilience; Ecosystem services; Forest management; Ecological restoration (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:forpol:v:27:y:2013:i:c:p:8-12 DOI: 10.1016/j.forpol.2012.11.002 Access Statistics for this article Forest Policy and Economics is currently edited by M. Krott More articles in Forest Policy and Economics from Elsevier |
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