Policymakers are examining a wide range of alternatives for climate change mitigation, including carbon offset sales programs, to enhance sequestration in the forest sector. Under an offset sales program, on-the-ground forestry could change as a result of both afforestation and modifications in the management of existing forests. These effects could vary markedly by region in the United States because of differences in areas o...

Impacts of rural land development on natural resources in the United States have been well documented and research on rural land development provides important inputs to land conservation policy and program development. Although numerous land-use studies have been completed for the western and eastern states, still lacking is a single study examining changes in population, housing, and land development in the two regions. To p...

Owned by individuals, families, corporations, and other private groups, private forests account for almost 60% of all forestland in the conterminous United States and provide critical habitat for wildlife, including over 3,700 at-risk plant and animal species. Extensive areas of private forest and other land covers have experienced increased housing development in recent years, with numerous implications for wildlife conservat...

Concerns have grown about the loss of forestland to development, leading to both public and private efforts to preserve forestland as open space. These lands comprise social values–ecological, scenic, recreation, and resource protection values–not typically reflected in market prices for land. When these values are present, it is up to public and private agencies to provide them in sufficient quantity. We discuss nonmarket soc...

Shifting patterns of land use in the United States are associated with many of today's environmental concerns. Land-use shifts occur because of relative changes in land rents, which are determined in part by financial returns in commodity markets. In recent decades, more than 3 million ac shifted annually in or out of US forest use. Gross amounts of land-use change are an order of magnitude larger than net changes. Between 198...

Private forestlands in the United States face increasing pressures from growing populations, resulting in greater numbers of people living in closer proximity to forests. What often is called the “wildland/urban interface” is characterized by expansion of residential and other developed land uses onto forested landscapes in a manner that threatens forestlands as productive socioeconomic and ecological resources. Prevailing hyp...

Predictions of future forestland area are an important component of forest policy analyses. In this article, we test the ability of econometric land use models to accurately forecast forest area. We construct a panel data set for Alabama consisting of county and time-series observation for the period 1964 to 1992. We estimate models using restricted data sets—namely, data from early periods—and use out-of-sample values of depe...

Programs to enhance nontimber services increasingly focus on nonindustrial private forest (NIPF) owners. These owners are believed to possess multiple objectives, causing them to respond to economic forces and policies in complex and unpredictable ways. We examine NIPF owners in western Oregon and western Washington, using a survey to document their forest ownership objectives and willingness to accept incentive payments to fo...