Risks of fire and the management of catchments for timber production and urban water supply
Collections | ANU Fenner School of Environment & Society |
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Title: | Risks of fire and the management of catchments for timber production and urban water supply |
Author(s): | McCarthy, Michael A Lindenmayer, David B |
Keywords: | Economic return; Info-gap decision theory; Stochastic model; Uncertainty |
Date published: | Dec-2005 |
Publisher: | Canberra, ACT: Center for Resource and Environmental Studies (CRES), The Australian National University |
Series/Report no.: | Working Paper (Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies, ANU): No. 2005/1 |
Description: | While previous studies have examined how forest management is influenced by the risk of
fire, they rely on probabilistic estimates of the occurrence and impacts of fire. However, nonprobabilistic
approaches are required for assessing the importance of fire risk when data are
poor but risks are appreciable. We explore impacts of fire risk on forest management using
as a case study a water catchment in the Australian Capital Territory (south-eastern
Australia). In this forested area, urban water supply and timber yields from exotic plantations
are potential joint but also competing land uses. Our analyses were stimulated by extensive
wildfires in early 2003 that burned much of the existing exotic pine plantation estate in the
water catchment and the resulting need to explore the relative economic benefits of
revegetating the catchment with exotic plantations or native vegetation. The current mean
fire interval in the ACT is approximately 40 years, making the establishment of a pine
plantation economically marginal at a 4% discount rate. However, the relative impact on
water yield of revegetation with native species and pines is very uncertain, as is the risk of
fire under climate change. We use info-gap decision theory to account for these nonprobabilistic
sources of uncertainty, demonstrating that the decision that is most robust to
uncertainty is highly sensitive to the cost of native revegetation. If costs of native
revegetation are sufficiently small, this option is more robust to uncertainty than
revegetation with a commercial pine plantation. |
URI: | http://hdl.handle.net/1885/146515 |
ISBN: | 0-9775068-0-0 |
ISSN: | 0313-7414 |
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