Ken Stollery (Department of Economics, University of Waterloo)
Abstract
This paper builds a Faustmann-based model to investigate the effects of increased climate-induced fire risk on the optimal rotation period in a commercial forest. Simulations using species of trees prevalent in North American forests indicate that both the commercial and socially optimal rotation ages decline as the risk increases. This occurs despite the fact that the inclusion of carbon sequestration benefits in society's maximand means that the socially optimal rotation length exceeds the length that is commercially profitable. The increased fire risk as the climate warms also has important implications for the ability of forests to act as absorbers of carbon. The arguments of the 'Umbrella Group' of countries who desire to use their forests' carbon-absorbing ability to offset their need for fossil fuel emission reductions will have increasingly less force as the climate warms. Because the heightened fire risk dramatically reduces the ability of living forests to act as carbon sinks, alternative proposals for storing carbon by 'pickling' wood in cold lakes look increasingly attractive.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by University of Waterloo, Department of Economics in its series Working Papers with number
01001.
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: (Jennifer Lehman).
Related research
Keywords:
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Did you know? Citation analysis on IDEAS includes online papers that are freely accessible and whose text could be automatically analyzed, currently about 210000 papers.