Economic analysis of prescribed burning for wildfire management in Western Australia

Veronique Florec, David Pannell, Michael Burton, Joel Kelso, Drew Mellor and George Milne

No 135305, Working Papers from University of Western Australia, School of Agricultural and Resource Economics

Abstract: Wildfires can cause significant damage to ecosystems, life and property, and wildfire events that do not involve people and property are becoming rare. With the expansion of the rural–urban interface in Western Australia and elsewhere, objectives of life and property protection become more difficult to achieve. We applied the cost plus net value change (C+NVC) model to a synthetic landscape, representative of the northern jarrah forest of the south west of Western Australia. The most economically efficient level of prescribed burning corresponds to a strategy where 5% of the simulated landscape is prescribed-burned per year. Our results are sensitive to changes in the average cost per hectare of prescribed burning, the probabilities of fire occurrence, urban area values (in average dollars per hectare) and suppression costs.

Keywords: Environmental Economics and Policy; Land Economics/Use (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 16
Date: 2012-08-20
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:uwauwp:135305

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.135305

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