Democratic participation has increasingly become a natural resource management policy approach for governments around the world. Yet, its effective application across stakeholder groups remains a challenge. With original survey data from Mexico, a country with extensive common property forestland, we assess the effect of incorporating both local representation and outside technical expertise on...

Forest certification programs provide standards for multiple aspects of forest management, including the use of chemicals for mitigating competition and forest pests. The three most common programs in the United States—the American Tree Farm System, the Forest Stewardship Council, and the Sustainable Forestry Initiative—all address chemical use. To evaluate relative impacts under different cert...

Using landscape analysis and economic valuation, this article shows how valuation techniques can inform prioritization of private forestland for ecosystem service conservation and highlights the methodological challenges in doing so. We classify forests according to six ecological and social characteristics. If ecosystem service priorities are known a priori, this landscape analysis might be su...

Watershed degradation is a serious environmental problem in Indonesia and the main causes can be differentiated between Java and the other outer islands. In the outer islands, degradation is caused mainly by rapid and heavy deforestation due to logging, fire, and forestland conversion for transmigration and smallholder plantations (World Bank, 1990). In Java, it is generated by population press...

This paper presents a model for examining the economic value of biotechnological research given time-dependent changes in biotechnology. Previous papers examined this issue assuming a time-neutral change in biotechnology. However, when analyzing the genetic improvements of increasing a tree’s resistance to a pathogen, this assumption is untenable. We derive analytical expressions for the optima...

Hurricanes can instantaneously affect millions of acres of forestland. In 1989, Hurricane Hugo reduced the inventory of softwood growth stock by 2 I percent in South Carolina (Sheffield and Thompson 1992). Annual forest inventories will provide nearly real-time estimates of change following catastrophic events. T h e ecological and economic sustainability of southern forests is in question. Leg...

The southern pine beetle (SPB) is the most destructive forest pest in the South. After a recent SPB outbreak, the US Forest Service (Forest Health Protection and Southern Research Station [SRS]) received SPB Initiative (SPBI) funding to focus more resources on proactive SPB prevention work. This funding is being used for on-the-ground accomplishments, landowner education, and research and devel...