Abstract

Several studies have shown the economic value of various ecosystem services provided by the forest. However, the economic value of how site-specific ecological conditions interact with other functions provided by the forest, such as timber value and carbon sequestration, has been less studied. As a result, this paper constructs a numerical discrete dynamic optimization model to estimate the economic value of site quality, taking into account its interaction with timber value and carbon sequestration, in Swedish forests. Analytical results show that the inclusion of the interaction of site quality with forest growth affects the optimal volume of harvest per year, compared to the case without consideration of site quality. The empirical results show that net present value, when considering timber values plus carbon sequestration and site quality interaction, is higher than the case where only timber and carbon sequestration were considered. However, the calculated net present value is sensitive to, in particular, the price of carbon sequestration and discount rate.

Keywords

timber benefit; ecological site quality; carbon sequestration; forest; Sweden

Published in

Forests
2020, Volume: 11, number: 1, article number: 29
Publisher: MDPI

SLU Authors

• Gren, Ing-Marie

  • Department of Economics, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

UKÄ Subject classification

Economics
Forest Science


Publication identifier

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/f11010029

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/104670