Challenges of Socio-economically Evaluating Wildfire Management on Non-industrial Private and Public Forestland in the Western United States

Abstract

Non-industrial private forests (NIPFs) and public forests in the United States generate many non-market benefits for landholders and society generally. These values can be both enhanced and diminished by wildfire management. This paper considers the challenges of supporting economically efficient allocation of wildfire suppression resources in a social cost-benefit analysis framework when non-market values are important. These challenges include substantial gaps in scientific understanding about how the spatial and temporal provision of non-market values are affected by wildfire, the limited utility of benefit transfer in wildfire assessment, a lack of studies that have estimated marginal willingness-to-pay to conserve non-market values, violation of consumer budget constraints, and the infeasibility of valuing indigenous cultural heritage. These challenges present serious impediments to adapting price-based decision-support tools to accommodate non-market values and support decision-making consistent with contemporary federal wildfire policy. Departure from the historic range and variability of ecological conditions is proposed as a complementary framework to support wildfire management decisions when non-market values are important on NIPF and public forestland.

Science synthesis to support socioecological resilience in the Sierra Nevada and southern Cascade Range

“…In addition, valuable components such as large trees can become increasingly vulnerable to fire as duff accumulates in the absence of frequent fire (Hood 2010). A general approach for evaluating impacts of wildfire on social and ecological values is to measure ecological departure from historical range of variability (HRV) (Venn and Calkin 2009). Such an emphasis is consistent with the idea that both the curtailment of fire and uncharacteristically severe wildfires are undesirable.…”

“…The nonmarket value of wildfire impacts are potentially very large but also challenging to assess owing to the size and diversity of resources that may be affected; the variability of responses across space and time (including the possibility that social preferences are likely to vary over time), and the infeasibility of valuing the cultural heritage of indigenous peoples (Venn and Calkin 2009). Furthermore, large fires threaten values held by people well beyond California, as residents of New…”

“…Education, notification, and other outreach measures may help to diminish residents' concerns, but fundamentally, prescribed burning requires sacrifice on the part of current local residents for the sake of a greater public good. On the other hand, it may also be important to emphasize the potential for planned burns to promote near-term benefits, by stimulating production of desirable habitat conditions, and addressing social and cultural benefits, as discussed in chapter 4.2 (see also Venn and Calkin 2009).…”

Integrated national-scale assessment of wildfire risk to human and ecological values

“…Effects analysis is made difficult by the scientific uncertainty and lack of data/information surrounding wildfire effects on non-market resources (Venn and Calkin 2009;Keane and Karau 2010). An expert systems approach was, therefore, adopted to deal with the scientific uncertainty (e.g., Vadrevu et al 2010;González et al 2007;Kaloudis et al 2005;Hirsch et al 1998Hirsch et al , 2004.…”

“…Often however price-based approaches do not adequately account for wildfire effects to non-market resources (Brillinger et al 2009). According to Venn and Calkin (2009), the current state of non-market valuation is insufficient to credibly monetize all resource values considered in this study, presenting a challenge to reporting and quantifying risk to multiple, overlapping resources at both pixel and landscape scales.…”