7Massive fires in Indonesian peatlands in the 1990s and in eastern Russian peatlands in 2002 and last year have highlighted the need to manage forests overlying peat deposits, as well as converted peat forests and open peatlands. Peat or peaty soils, contain 65% or more of partially decayed vegetation, can burn freely or underground. They cover some 10 percent of worldwide forests and contain 25 percent of all terrestrial carb...

Forest fuel reduction treatments are needed, as shown by the increased number and cost of devastating crown fires in overly dense forests. Although large trees can be removed for valuable products, the market value for the smaller logs may be less than the harvest and hauling charges, resulting in a net cost for thinning operations. However, failure to remove these small logs results in the retention of ladder fuels that suppo...

Riparian management is challenging for family forests. Regulatory buffers can have significant economic impacts on small ownerships and may not adequately address site-specific needs. Regulations in Washington State suggest riparian management templates as a solution. We propose an approach for developing these templates that combines economic criteria with a nonparametric statistical assessment of predicted stand structure re...

The study performs a joint estimation of the values for three important attributes of forest ecosystem management—biodiversity, aesthetics, and rural employment impacts using a choice-based, stated preference approach. It develops the marginal willingness-to-pay schedule for the three attributes for timber rural, other rural, and urban communities in Washington State. In contrast to the conventional wisdom in neoclassical econ...