Economics & Policy
The economics and policy team is analyzing life-cycle carbon balance of regional forest management systems and conducting multi-scale analyses of market and non-market forest benefits and services to provide the framework necessary to guide land manager decision-making under future management and climatic conditions. The team is conducting comprehensive life cycle analyses of regional forest management systems and multi-scale policy and economic analysis of market and non-market forest benefits and services. Research will evaluate regional tradeoffs and interactions among policy, climate scenarios, carbon/water/nutrient/energy footprints, forest management, and genetic deployment and assess adoption of alternative approaches by private landowners.
Specifically, the economics and policy team is
- conducting a comprehensive life cycle analysis (LCA) to quantify global warming impacts of various silvicultural practices and systems typical of non-industrial private forest (NIPF) landowners and industrial forest landowners. The information provided by the LCA will be used to calculate the environmental and financial criteria to determine optimal management regimes and rotation ages;
- exploring how carbon sequestration and mitigation efforts will affect ecological functions, goods and services;
- assessing the current and expected features of federal and state policies and programs anticipated to significantly impact climate change mitigation efforts in planted pine forests;
- utilizing surveys to evaluate the expected adoption of altered silvicultural practices for industrial and NIPF landowner management activities;
- assessing and comparing the risk and economic consequences (i.e., impact on timber and carbon values) of forest fire and southern pine beetle outbreaks under climate change with and without adaptation;
- modeling regional product market and carbon consequences of business-as-usual scenarios and potential new silvicultural management regimes.
