The Intersection between Climate Adaptation, Mitigation, and Natural Resources: An Empirical Analysis of Forest Management

Abstract

Forest landowners can adapt to climate change and carbon pricing by altering the types of forests that are replanted or regenerated. By inducing land-use changes within forestry, climate adaptation and mitigation policy can alter the flow of non-market forest ecosystem services. The purpose of this paper is to quantify the effect of climate change and carbon pricing on adaptation behavior of private forest owners. We develop an empirical framework with application to the U.S. Pacific coast. An estimated discrete-choice econometric model is used as the empirical basis for a simulation of land-use changes to the composition of a landscape's forest stock. Results indicate that climate change induces landowners to adapt away from their current dominant species choice of Douglas-fir to species more suitable for the future climate, notably hardwoods and ponderosa pine. A carbon price policy accelerates adaptation away from current forest types, potentially creating an externality at the local level.

Anticipating changes in wildlife habitat induced by private forest owners’ adaptation to climate change and carbon policy

“…Downscaled climate projections for Oregon and Washington, as well as northern California mostly anticipate warmer and drier conditions (Fig 3a), favoring hardwoods over Douglas-fir. Warmer and drier conditions favor hardwoods over Douglas-fir in the econometric model [3] because landowners who currently manage forests in warm and dry conditions (e.g. California) have been observed to be much less likely to plant Douglas-fir than landowners who currently manage forests in more temperate and wet conditions (e.g.…”

“…We use Hashida and Lewis' [3] econometric model of forest management to simulate changes in the composition of potential forest habitat for wildlife under alternative climate change and carbon pricing scenarios. The econometric model is estimated from the U.S.D.A.…”

“…Climate affects Prob k and Prob j|k , and hence, changes in climate will induce changes in Prob k and Prob j|k . Note that the above development suppresses notation for each plot and time period for simplicity-see S1 Text and [3] for a more precise mathematical development.…”

“…One was to use the mean results from the low and high carbon price scenarios to bracket the mean from our main climate change + carbon pricing scenario. The second approach was based on the main finding of Hashida and Lewis [3], of landowners shifting from Douglas-fir to other species. Under each scenario we ordered the 1,000 simulations from greatest loss of Douglas-fir, to the most gain of Douglas-fir through 2100.…”

“…One pathway through which climate change could affect biodiversity is through the adaptation decisions of forest landowners. By altering productivity of commercially valuable tree species such as Douglas-fir in the Pacific states of the U.S. [2] climate change creates incentives for landowners to switch the types of trees they replant, thereby creating landscape changes to the composition of different types of forests [3]. Changes in the composition of forest landscapes alters habitat for wildlife, particularly those species that are specialized to specific types of forests.…”