Complementarity in the provision of ecosystem services reduces the cost of mitigating amplified natural disturbance events.
Climate change has been implicated as a root cause of the recent surge in natural disturbance events such as storms, wildfires, and insect outbreaks. This climate-based surge has led to a greater focus on disturbance-mitigating benefits of ecosystem management. Quantifying these benefits requires knowledge of the relationship between natural and anthropogenic disturbances, which is lacking at the temporal and spatial scales needed to inform ecosystem-based management. This study investigates a specific relationship between timber harvesting and climate-amplified outbreaks of mountain pine beetle. If harvesting is located to mitigate long-distance insect dispersal, there is potential for a win-win outcome in which both timber production and forest conservation can be increased. This spatially targeted harvesting strategy lowers the cost of providing disturbance-mitigating ecosystem services, because valuable timber products are also produced. Mitigating long-distance dispersal also produces net gains in forest conservation across various stakeholder groups. These results speak to ongoing federal efforts to encourage forest vegetation removal on public forestlands to improve forest health. These efforts will lower the cost of responding to climate-amplified natural disturbance events but only if vegetation removal efforts are spatially located to reduce disturbance risk. Otherwise, efforts to improve forest health may be converting forest conservation services to timber services.
Howard H. Baker Jr. Center for Public Policy and Department of Economics, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37920; cbsims@utk.edu.
Charles
C
Sims
Department of Economics and Finance, University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY 82071; and.
David
D
Aadland
Departments of Mathematics and Statistics and Biology and.
James
J
Powell
Department of Economics and Finance, University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY 82071; and.
David C
DC
Finnoff
Remote Sensing/Geographic Information Systems Laboratory, Department of Wildland Resources, Utah State University, Logan, UT 84322.
Ben
B
Crabb
D057231:Climate Change; D003365:Costs and Cost Analysis; D017753:Ecosystem
efficiency frontier; forest conservation; insect outbreaks; natural capital; stratified dispersal