[MCN] Fire: To save the forests, cut ... the emissions

[Lance Olsen]

Ecological Economics Volume 116, August 2015, Pages 261-269
doi:10.1016/j.ecolecon.2015.04.020

The cost of climate change: Ecosystem services and wildland fires
Christine Lee, , Claire Schlemme, Jessica Murray, Robert Unsworth

Highlights
*Climate change is likely to increase wildland fire frequency and severity.
*Greenhouse gas mitigation can reduce the impacts of climate change.
*Quantitative analysis of the effect of wildfire 
on ecosystem services is limited.
*We use habitat equivalency analysis to monetize 
impacts of climate change-induced wildland fire 
on ecosystem services.
*Ecosystem service benefits of GHG mitigation in 
the contiguous U.S. are substantial.

Abstract [ Open Access]
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800915002050

Little research has focused on the economic 
impact associated with climate-change induced 
wildland fire on natural ecosystems and the goods 
and services they provide. We examine changes in 
wildland fire patterns based on the U.S. Forest 
Service's MC1 dynamic global vegetation model 
from 2013 to 2115 under two pre-defined 
scenarios: a reference (i.e., business-as-usual) 
and a greenhouse gas mitigation policy scenario. 
We construct a habitat equivalency model under 
which fuels management activities, actions 
commonly undertaken to reduce the frequency 
and/or severity of wildland fire, are used to 
compensate for climate change-induced losses in 
ecosystem services on conservation lands in the 
contiguous U.S. resulting from wildland fire. The 
benefit of the greenhouse gas mitigation policy 
is equal to the difference in fuels management 
costs between the reference and policy scenarios. 
Results suggest present value ecosystem service 
benefits of greenhouse gas mitigation on the 
average of $3.5 billion (2005 dollars, assuming a 
three percent discount rate). Our analysis 
highlights the importance of considering loss of 
ecosystem services when evaluating the impacts of 
alternative greenhouse gas mitigation policies.

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"A new area of study is the field that some of us 
are beginning to call social traps. The term 
refers to situations in society that contain 
traps formally like a fish trap, where men or 
whole societies get themselves started in some 
direction or some set of relationships that later 
prove to be unpleasant or lethal and that they 
see no easy way to back out of or to avoid."

John Platt. Social Traps. American Psychologist, August 1973
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"Transitions between regimes with radically 
different properties are ubiquitous in nature. 
Such transitions can occur either smoothly or in 
an abrupt and catastrophic fashion. Important 
examples of the latter can be found in ecology, 
climate sciences, and economics, to name a few, 
where regime shifts have catastrophic 
consequences that are mostly irreversible."

Paula Villa Martín, Juan A. Bonachel, Simon A. 
Levin, and Miguel A. Muñoz. Eluding catastrophic 
shifts. PNAS Early Edition 
www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1414708112







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