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Shaping the Landscape: A Framework for Evaluating the Economic Benefits of Fuel Treatments
Shaping the Landscape: A Framework for Evaluating the Economic Benefits of Fuel Treatments
상세정보
- 자료유형
- 학위논문 서양
- 최종처리일시
- 20260202105147
- ISBN
- 9798297647831
- DDC
- 634.9
- 서명/저자
- Shaping the Landscape: A Framework for Evaluating the Economic Benefits of Fuel Treatments
- 발행사항
- [Sl] : University of California, Davis, 2025
- 발행사항
- Ann Arbor : ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, 2025
- 형태사항
- 200 p
- 주기사항
- Source: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 87-04, Section: B.
- 주기사항
- Advisor: Reimer, Matthew;Hansen-Lewis, Jamie.
- 학위논문주기
- Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of California, Davis, 2025.
- 초록/해제
- 요약Climate change has heightened the importance of land management practices that restore ecosystem health and deliver environmental, social, and economic benefits. Fuel treatments have emerged as one such practice, designed to reduce wildfire risk and restore ecosystem function in semiarid and pine-dominated systems that historically experienced low-severity fire. Despite ambitious commitments, such as the U.S. Forest Service's plan to treat 50 million acres in high-risk landscapes over the next decade, rigorous evidence on their cost-effectiveness remains limited. Evaluating fuel treatments and understanding under which conditions they are cost-effective has been difficult due to data limitations and causal identification challenges. This dissertation addresses this gap by designing empirical frameworks that combine quasi-experimental methods with high-resolution spatial data to evaluate fuel treatment impacts across multiple outcomes, including suppression costs, property loss, smoke emissions, fire spread, and burn severity.Chapter 1 investigates the fundamental question of whether fuel treatments are cost-effective. Focusing on the Pacific Northwest, I leverage variation from Northern Spotted Owl habitat protections-which unintentionally restricted treatment activity-as an instrument to estimate fuel treatments' causal impact on wildfire suppression costs. I find that each dollar spent on treatments saved an estimated four to seven dollars in suppression expenditures, highlighting the potential for policy reforms that maintain conservation objectives while generating substantial economic savings.Building on this foundation, Chapter 2 asks which types of treatments are most effective in reducing damages from wildfires, such as property loss and smoke emissions. Using high-resolution spatial data from 2017-2023 across the Western United States and a spatial difference-in-differences design, I estimate that treatments avoided $2.7 billion in damages, yielding a benefit-cost ratio of $3.42. Large-scale treatments and prescribed burns provide the greatest returns, underscoring how both treatment type and scale influence overall cost-effectiveness.Chapter 3 returns to the Pacific Northwest to assess the impact of environmental regulatory reforms on treatment activity and their subsequent impacts on suppression costs and wildfire damages. Specifically, I evaluate the 2011 Revised Recovery Plan for the Northern Spotted Owl, which relaxed restrictions on fuel treatments in protected habitat. I find that the policy increased treatment activity by roughly 91,000 acres and generated over $1 billion in economic benefits, largely through avoided suppression costs. Ecological gains, however, were modest, with limited reductions in burn severity within Northern Spotted Owl habitat and old-growth forest.Taken together, this dissertation demonstrates that fuel treatments are a cost-effective tool for mitigating wildfire risk, with effectiveness varying by treatment type, size, region, and regulatory context. The empirical frameworks developed here can be applied in future evaluations to strengthen policy and improve project design. More broadly, the findings highlight persistent regulatory and capacity constraints within U.S. land agencies, underscoring both the promise and the limitations of policy reforms aimed at promoting proactive forest management that advances wildfire mitigation and species conservation goals.
- 일반주제명
- Forestry
- 키워드
- Fuel treatments
- 키워드
- Wildfire
- 기타저자
- University of California, Davis Agricultural and Resource Economics
- 기본자료저록
- Dissertations Abstracts International. 87-04B.
- 전자적 위치 및 접속
- 로그인 후 원문을 볼 수 있습니다.
MARC
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■00520260202105147
■006m o d
■007cr#unu||||||||
■020 ▼a9798297647831
■035 ▼a(MiAaPQ)AAI32241380
■040 ▼aMiAaPQ▼cMiAaPQ
■0820 ▼a634.9
■1001 ▼aStrabo, Frederik.
■24510▼aShaping the Landscape: A Framework for Evaluating the Economic Benefits of Fuel Treatments
■260 ▼a[Sl]▼bUniversity of California, Davis▼c2025
■260 1▼aAnn Arbor▼bProQuest Dissertations & Theses▼c2025
■300 ▼a200 p
■500 ▼aSource: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 87-04, Section: B.
■500 ▼aAdvisor: Reimer, Matthew;Hansen-Lewis, Jamie.
■5021 ▼aThesis (Ph.D.)--University of California, Davis, 2025.
■520 ▼aClimate change has heightened the importance of land management practices that restore ecosystem health and deliver environmental, social, and economic benefits. Fuel treatments have emerged as one such practice, designed to reduce wildfire risk and restore ecosystem function in semiarid and pine-dominated systems that historically experienced low-severity fire. Despite ambitious commitments, such as the U.S. Forest Service's plan to treat 50 million acres in high-risk landscapes over the next decade, rigorous evidence on their cost-effectiveness remains limited. Evaluating fuel treatments and understanding under which conditions they are cost-effective has been difficult due to data limitations and causal identification challenges. This dissertation addresses this gap by designing empirical frameworks that combine quasi-experimental methods with high-resolution spatial data to evaluate fuel treatment impacts across multiple outcomes, including suppression costs, property loss, smoke emissions, fire spread, and burn severity.Chapter 1 investigates the fundamental question of whether fuel treatments are cost-effective. Focusing on the Pacific Northwest, I leverage variation from Northern Spotted Owl habitat protections-which unintentionally restricted treatment activity-as an instrument to estimate fuel treatments' causal impact on wildfire suppression costs. I find that each dollar spent on treatments saved an estimated four to seven dollars in suppression expenditures, highlighting the potential for policy reforms that maintain conservation objectives while generating substantial economic savings.Building on this foundation, Chapter 2 asks which types of treatments are most effective in reducing damages from wildfires, such as property loss and smoke emissions. Using high-resolution spatial data from 2017-2023 across the Western United States and a spatial difference-in-differences design, I estimate that treatments avoided $2.7 billion in damages, yielding a benefit-cost ratio of $3.42. Large-scale treatments and prescribed burns provide the greatest returns, underscoring how both treatment type and scale influence overall cost-effectiveness.Chapter 3 returns to the Pacific Northwest to assess the impact of environmental regulatory reforms on treatment activity and their subsequent impacts on suppression costs and wildfire damages. Specifically, I evaluate the 2011 Revised Recovery Plan for the Northern Spotted Owl, which relaxed restrictions on fuel treatments in protected habitat. I find that the policy increased treatment activity by roughly 91,000 acres and generated over $1 billion in economic benefits, largely through avoided suppression costs. Ecological gains, however, were modest, with limited reductions in burn severity within Northern Spotted Owl habitat and old-growth forest.Taken together, this dissertation demonstrates that fuel treatments are a cost-effective tool for mitigating wildfire risk, with effectiveness varying by treatment type, size, region, and regulatory context. The empirical frameworks developed here can be applied in future evaluations to strengthen policy and improve project design. More broadly, the findings highlight persistent regulatory and capacity constraints within U.S. land agencies, underscoring both the promise and the limitations of policy reforms aimed at promoting proactive forest management that advances wildfire mitigation and species conservation goals.
■590 ▼aSchool code: 0029.
■650 4▼aForestry
■653 ▼aClimate adaptation
■653 ▼aConservation goals
■653 ▼aForest management
■653 ▼aFuel treatments
■653 ▼aNatural disasters
■653 ▼aWildfire
■690 ▼a0438
■690 ▼a0501
■690 ▼a0478
■690 ▼a0503
■71020▼aUniversity of California, Davis▼bAgricultural and Resource Economics.
■7730 ▼tDissertations Abstracts International▼g87-04B.
■790 ▼a0029
■791 ▼aPh.D.
■792 ▼a2025
■793 ▼aEnglish
■85640▼uhttp://www.riss.kr/pdu/ddodLink.do?id=T17359621▼nKERIS▼z이 자료의 원문은 한국교육학술정보원에서 제공합니다.


