A NOTE ON THE ECONOMIC SURPLUS FROM DAIRY HERD RECORDING IN VICTORIA*

An input demand model was used to estimate the own price elasticity of dairy herd recording in Victoria. The net benefits to society over a 21 year period were estimated by determining the economic surplus accruing to participators each year and then subtracting all Government monies involved. The net social benefits, unlike the benefits reported for the New South Wales scheme, have on average been positive and have been consistently positive over the latter years of the data.     

Estimating the economic value of big game habitat production from prescribed fire using a time series approach

This paper demonstrates a time-series production technique to quantify the deer harvest and deer hunting benefits of controlled burns or prescribed fire. The time series regression model showed a statistically significant and positive effect of prescribed fire on deer harvest. The net economic value of the resulting additional deer hunting benefit was estimated using the Contingent Valuation Method at $ 98 per additional deer harvested. The initial deer hunting benefits of an additional 1,000 acres of prescribed burning are between $ 2,674 and $ 3,128 or $ 2-3 per acre. The costs of prescribed burning greatly exceed these benefits, suggesting that deer hunting benefits represent only a small part of the multiple use benefits of prescribed fire.     

公众对森林火灾的态度

利用里克特量表试图评估公众、消防战士和受森林火灾影响的村民等3个人群对森林火灾的看法。3组所有受访者一致认为,森林火灾会造成空气污染、土壤侵蚀、温室效应和浓雾,间接导致哮喘、呼吸系统感染、皮肤感染等疾病。受森林火灾危害的村民支持森林防火灭火,认为森林火灾是大问题。然而,市民和消防战士不同意这种看法,研究结果将帮助有关当局制订防火决策和教育活动。     

Early evacuation is the best bushfire risk mitigation strategy for south‐eastern Australia

Given the large and increasing bushfire threat to lives and property in Australia, there is a need for economic evaluation of risk mitigation policies that can be implemented by governments and homeowners. Three broad policies applicable for existing at‐risk communities are evaluated: expanded use of landscape‐scale prescribed fire; home ignition zone treatment (bushfire defence sprinklers); and early evacuation when a bushfire is burning on extreme or catastrophic fire danger days. Early evacuation is the only option that yields net economic benefits relative to existing policy.     

Contribution of suppression difficulty and lessons learned in forecasting fire suppression operations productivity: A methodological approach

We propose an economic analysis using utility and productivity, and efficiency theories to provide fire managers a decision support tool to determine the most efficient fire management programs levels. By incorporating managers’ accumulated fire suppression experiences (capitalized experience) in the analysis we help fire managers determine fire suppression productivity and efficient budget allocation. Furthermore, monitoring of the management index (MI) helps identify operational deficiencies in the different districts where the analysis is applied. This is so because internally the area contraction factor (ACF) provides information regarding the effectiveness of fire suppression operations by including a comparison ratio between the area affected and the potential fire area without suppression actions. We used the Almonaster fire that occurred in 2008 in the Huelva Province, Spain as a case study to test the applicability of the methodology. Our evaluation showed that the combinations of firefighting resources assigned to the Almonaster fire resulted in a fire suppression efficiency of only 33%, measured as the ratio between damages avoided and suppression costs involved.     

Economic benefits of public investment in weed management: the case of vulpia in south-eastern Australia's temperate pasture areas

The present paper reports an economic evaluation of the long-term benefits to Australia of research by the Cooperative Research Centre for Weed Management Systems (CRC) into the improved management of vulpia , the major annual grass weed of temperate pastures in New South Wales and Victoria. Vulpia reduces livestock production by competition with more desirable pasture species, by the production of low quality feed at critical times of the grazing cycle, and by injury to animals. A 20-year stochastic benefit-cost analysis indicated that reducing the impacts of vulpia in these pastures produced a mean net present value of $A58.3 million and a mean benefit-cost ratio of 33:1. Temperate pasture zone wool producers would capture the largest shares of these benefits, Australian consumers would gain, but wool producers in the rest of Australia would suffer welfare losses from vulpia reductions in the temperate pasture zones.     

Optimal management of a flammable forest providing timber and carbon sequestration benefits: an Australian case study*

In deciding to keep or fell a forest stand given its age, the risk of loss of timber through wildfire is an important consideration. If trees also have value from sequestration of carbon, another effect of fire is the unplanned loss of stored carbon. Factors affecting the decision to keep or fell trees, and how much to spend on fire protection, are investigated using stochastic dynamic programming, using carbon sequestration in stands of mountain ash in Victoria as a case study. The effect of treating sawlogs as a permanent carbon sink after harvesting is explored.     

Technology change as a policy response to promote changes in land management for environmental benefits

A previous study developed a framework for choosing among groups of policy mechanisms for encouraging environmentally beneficial land-use change. The framework highlights that these choices should depend on the relative levels of private (or internal) net benefits, and public (or external) net benefits. Incentive-based mechanisms (polluter-pays and/or beneficiary-pays) and extension need to be targeted carefully to appropriate projects—where private net benefits are close to zero, and/or public net benefits are more extremely positive or negative. This article focuses on policy mechanisms that alter the net benefits of changing land management, including R&D to develop new technologies, and training to improve the skill of landholders at using existing technologies. These policy options are now treated more comprehensively within the public benefits: private benefits framework. Benefits of technology-change projects can include reductions in the opportunity cost of compliance with environmental programs, increases in the public benefits of a particular type of land-use change, or improvements in private net benefits, resulting in public benefits through greater or more rapid adoption by private landholders. From an environmental management perspective, technology development is most relevant where public net benefits of land use change are positive and private net benefits are negative, but not highly negative. There is a set of projects for which technology change is the only viable alternative to no action, highlighting the importance of technology change in these cases.     

An econometric model for ex ante prediction of wildfire suppression costs

This paper develops an econometric model that can provide predictions of fire suppression costs (per acre and in total) for a given large fire before final fire acreage is known. The model jointly estimates cost per acre and acreage equations via Maximum Likelihood, accounting for sample truncation based on final fire size. Formulas and results are shown for predictions of costs and fire size for wildfires in general, and for large fires in particular. Marginal effects of explanatory variables on cost and acreage are discussed. The distribution of these model predictions illustrates the importance of accounting for sample truncation when generating predicted outcomes based on ex ante information.     

Playing with Fire: Endogenous Risk in Resource Management

Prescribed fire as a wildfire risk mitigation tool is receiving increasing attention in the United States after a century of emphasis on suppression. A dynamic economic model of prescribed fire use, precaution, and timing is developed and applied to three important policy issues: vegetation management on the wildland-urban interface; the effect of liability on vegetation management decisions; and the problem of heavy initial fuel loads after years of suppression and fuel accumulation. Numerical simulation results are presented as illustrations of the analytical model.     

集体林权制度改革后森林火灾预防问题思考——以福建清流县为例

随着全面实施集体林权制度改革,森林防火面临新的问题,森林火灾预防和措施遇到新的挑战。面对挑战应采取建立森林防火新体系,组建森林消防协会群体联防,创新火源管理机制,重视护林巡山,加快森林消防队伍建设,实行林火有偿扑救等举措。     

自然保护区森林防火对策探讨

对自然保护区森林防火现状进行剖析,指出存在的主要问题,如非生产性用火是引起森林火灾的主要来源、违章用火者趋向老龄化、旅游和登山人员野外随意用火行为难以禁止、林内可燃物逐年增多、发生森林火灾的机率增加、生物防火林带建设力度不够等,提出加强宣传和监督检查力度、加强可燃物和火源管理、加强水灭火设施、生物防火林带、扑火队伍建设等自然保护区森林防火的对策。     

Language–Related Differences in a Contingent Valuation Study: English versus Spanish

To test the similarity of English– and Spanish–speaking households responses to a contingent valuation survey, phone interviews were conducted in both languages regarding two forest fire prevention programs. While there were similar response rates, there were significant differences in the most frequent reasons given for refusing to pay. In the pooled logit model, the language intercept and bid interaction variables were insignificant in both programs. The likelihood ratio test of separate logit equations showed no statistical difference between English– and Spanish–speaking households responses to either program. Mean benefits reported by Spanish–speaking households were about one–third lower than English–speaking households, although the difference is not statistically significant.     

曹娥江大闸经济效益分析

分析曹娥江大闸枢纽工程的防洪、防潮、治涝、供水、水环境保护和航运等经济效益,并对经济内部收益率、经济净现值和效益费用比等经济评价指标进行了计算,进一步探讨了兴建曹娥江大闸的经济性和可行性.     

Enhancing ecosystem services through afforestation: How policy can help

We employ an integrated spatial economic model to assess the net private and public benefits of converting marginal agricultural land into forest plantations (afforestation) in New Zealand. For numerous locations, we conduct policy analysis considering the magnitudes of net private and public benefits of land use changes to determine whether a policy response is justified and, if so, to identify the appropriate policy instruments to encourage adoption of afforestation. Net private benefit is commonly negative, so much so, that in most cases no policy response is justified. However, in certain cases, net private benefits are slightly negative and public benefits are significantly positive justifying the use of positive incentives as the most appropriate policy instrument to encourage afforestation in New Zealand. The most commonly used policy instruments for afforestation in New Zealand, extension and awareness training, are found to be appropriate in only a minority of situations.     

Evaluating Alternative Prescribed Burning Policies to Reduce Net Economic Damages from Wildfire

We estimate a wildfire risk model with a new measure of wildfire output, intensity-weighted risk and use it in Monte Carlo simulations to estimate welfare changes from alternative prescribed burning policies. Using Volusia County, Florida as a case study, an annual prescribed burning rate of 13% of all forest lands maximizes net welfare; ignoring the effects on wildfire intensity may underestimate optimal rates of prescribed burning. Our estimated supply function for prescribed fire services is inelastic, suggesting that increasing contract prescribed fire services on public lands may produce rapidly escalating costs for private landowners and unintended distributional and "leakage" effects.     

论森林火灾的预防与扑救措施

根据森林火灾发生的特点,分析火灾发生前后预防与扑救的主要矛盾,在森林火灾预防和扑救阶段,应采取不同的应对措施。按照"预防为主、积极消灭"的方针,在预防中重宣传教育,发动群众,抓责任落实;在消灭中注重科技手段和措施到位。     

关于建立森林防火半专业扑火队的经济学思考——以福建省闽侯县鸿尾乡为例

以福建省闽侯县鸿尾乡为例,指出政府的森林防火工作绩效弱化和林农抗灾能力有限等因素造成了森林防火形势不容乐观;阐明了半专业扑火队优势明显,应从观念创新、组织创新等方面思考筹建;提出森林防火半专业扑火队的筹建应走政府主导强制变迁与内生性需求诱致变迁相结合的制度变迁路径。     

三峡库区地质灾害防治社会效益评价框架设计

文章在三峡库区地质灾害防治总体规划和地质灾害防治项目社会效益评价理论研究的基础上 ,结合三峡库区地质灾害防治工程项目的特点 ,设计了地质灾害防治工程项目社会效益评价的内容 ,一是评价国家投资 40亿元进行地质灾害防治对保障库区人民生命安全的评价 ;二是地质灾害防治工程对减少水库淤积量的评价 ;三是地质灾害防治工程对三峡水库移民区社会影响分析。并提出了评价方法。