Search for Articles:
Title / Keyword
Author / Affiliation / Email
Journal
Article Type
 
 
Advanced Search
 
Section
Special Issue
Volume
Issue
Number
Page
 
4.4
2.4
Journals
Forests
Special Issues
Economic Valuation of Forest Resources and Ecosystem Services: A Support...
share announcement

Economic Valuation of Forest Resources and Ecosystem Services: A Support Tool for Effective Decision-Making

A special issue of Forests (ISSN 1999-4907). This special issue belongs to the section "Forest Economics, Policy, and Social Science".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 September 2023) | Viewed by 3454

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Rawshan Ara Begum

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Centre for Corporate Sustainability and Environmental Finance, Macquarie Business School, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW 2109, Australia
Interests: sustainable forest management; cost benefit analysis; economic and environmental benefits; climate change impact; adaptation and mitigation
Dr. Neil Perry

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
School of Business, Western Sydney University, Locked Bag 1797, Penrith, NSW 2751, Australia
Interests: environmental and natural resource economics; ecological economics; sustainability; housing; regional economic development; cost-benefit analysis; economic and program evaluation
Dr. Asif Raihan

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Institute of Climate Change, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Bangi 43600, Selangor, Malaysia
Interests: forests; environment; climate change; econometrics; sustainability; sustainable forest management; environmental economics

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Forest ecosystems contribute to the provision of essential goods and services. It is becoming increasingly important to carry out economic valuation of the tangible and intangible goods and services provided by forests at the local, national, and international level. Currently, the deterioration of forests, tropical forests, wetlands, and other biodiversity-rich ecosystems is at stake. It is crucial to understand the economic value of the forest resources and ecosystem services to avert deforestation and forest degradation and ensure forest protection and conservation, human wellbeing, ecosystem health, and sustainable forest management. As a result, there has been significant progress in terms of valuation of the functions of forests and its resources and ecosystems, which is of paramount relevance for better informed decisions. It is imperative to consider economic and non-economic values by employing a wide range of valuation methods and tools such as revealed and stated preferences, total economic value, and cost–benefit analysis.

For this Special Issue, we are seeking papers that broadly address the value of forest resources and ecosystem services which can assist with effective policy and decision-making. Papers that identify critical challenges and discuss good practices in forests valuation, advantages and limits of valuation concepts and methods, potential for improved forest management strategies, and advancement in stakeholders’ engagement, providing examples of empirical analysis and case study, are of particular interest. The papers should inform policy and decision makers, program and project implementers, funding agencies, educators, and researchers about the economic, social, and ecological values and viability of various strategies for forest resources management, conservation, and sustainability. These papers may take the form of experiments, observations, perspectives, and reviews. All submissions should address critical, unsolved problems and questions that can drive future research directions that strive to enhance our understanding of the economic valuation of forest resources and ecosystem services, including cultural and spiritual values, livelihoods, recreation, biodiversity conservation, adaptation, mitigation and resilience, etc. 

Dr. Rawshan Ara Begum
Dr. Neil Perry
Dr. Asif Raihan
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Forests is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • forests resources
  • ecosystem services
  • economic valuation
  • forest economics
  • forest management
  • decision-making tool
  • cost–benefit analysis
  • choice experiment
  • contingent valuation
  • travel cost
  • hedonic pricing
  • environmental accounting

Published Papers (2 papers)

Download All Papers
Order results
Result details
Show export options expand_more Show export options expand_less
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:

Research

17 pages, 2297 KiB  
Article
Valuing Forestry Agronomic Potential under Seasonal Mean-Reverting Prices
by Ángel León, Eyda Marín and David Toscano
Forests 2023, 14(7), 1317; https://doi.org/10.3390/f14071317 - 27 Jun 2023
Viewed by 800
Abstract
In the valuation of forest resources, the alternative use of the land is one of the central themes. In most cases it is made without taking into account the uncertainty and the possible flexibility of the alternative use. Within these alternatives, the strategy [...] Read more.
In the valuation of forest resources, the alternative use of the land is one of the central themes. In most cases it is made without taking into account the uncertainty and the possible flexibility of the alternative use. Within these alternatives, the strategy of shifting to a more profitable and sustainable crop is a well-studied topic in forest research. Although the transformation opportunity could add great value to the project, the valuation of this flexibility is obviated by traditional discounted cashflow criteria (NPV). The application of real options theory (ROT) makes it possible to assess this flexibility based on the uncertainty that the transformation entails. However, the hypotheses that are made about the future evolution of the underlying asset, in this case the value of the new crop, may condition the precision of the result. Usually some researchers model these conversions under the hypothesis of geometric Brownian motion (GBM), hypotheses that are not plausible when the new crop has a strong seasonal component. In this work, an adapted model framework is proposed to evaluate forest transformation opportunity into another crop when land use has both high agronomic potential and high seasonal component, a context in which classic real options framework is not applicable. As a work based on a theoretical model, after methodological motivation, the strawberry crop is chosen as alternative due to its seasonal component. Using private data for this crop, we model through the Ornstein–Uhlenbeck process, with mean-reversion (MR) to a seasonal component, and then we use of Longstaff and Schwartz’s algorithm to calculate the option value. The results show that when considering flexibility in option valuation it leads to an increase on the return of more than 4%. Furthermore, robustness analysis evidence shows that option value is very sensitive to seasonal component, reinforcing previous evidence that suggests that the MR process offers a more accurate and appropriate valuation over the traditional GBM in the arena of agronomic potential valuation. Specifically, the result of valuing this transformation through the MR process is between 1.5 and 1.7 times the value of the NPV, which results in approximately a 13% annual return. If GBM had been used, the valuation would have been a 72% annual return, an unrealistic result in this context, due to the non-consideration of the seasonal mean-reverting prices process. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Economic Valuation of Forest Resources and Ecosystem Services: A Support Tool for Effective Decision-Making)
15 pages, 3381 KiB  
Article
Improving Carbon Sequestration Capacity of Forest Vegetation in China: Afforestation or Forest Management?
by Li Gao and Hua Li
Forests 2023, 14(6), 1077; https://doi.org/10.3390/f14061077 - 23 May 2023
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 1952
Abstract
Both forest management—especially forest tending—and afforestation help to enhance the carbon sequestration of forest vegetation. However, with limited resources, appropriate measures need to be selected to increase the vegetation carbon sinks based on regional endowments. This study aimed to assess the differences in [...] Read more.
Both forest management—especially forest tending—and afforestation help to enhance the carbon sequestration of forest vegetation. However, with limited resources, appropriate measures need to be selected to increase the vegetation carbon sinks based on regional endowments. This study aimed to assess the differences in the effects and costs of afforestation and forest tending on vegetation carbon sequestration and to help select suitable afforestation and forest tending areas. In this paper, we used panel fixed effects models to analyze the effects of afforestation and forest tending on vegetation carbon sequestration and conducted a regional heterogeneity analysis to identify suitable afforestation and tending areas. Our results show that the vegetation carbon sequestration capacity of forest tending is 4.48 times higher than that of afforestation, and there is obvious spatial heterogeneity in the effects of afforestation and forest tending on vegetation carbon sequestration. Specifically, the marginal contribution of afforestation is higher than that of tending in northwest and southwest China, whereas the marginal contribution of tending is greater in other regions. Additionally, the afforestation cost for vegetation carbon sequestration is 44.44 times higher than that of tending. Therefore, the management of existing forests must be enhanced, especially in northeastern, southern, and northern China. Similar to the northwest and southwest regions of China, there is still a need to emphasize the use of suitable space for afforestation. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Economic Valuation of Forest Resources and Ecosystem Services: A Support Tool for Effective Decision-Making)
►▼ Show Figures

Figure 1

Show export options expand_more Show export options expand_less
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:
 
Displaying articles 1-2
Back to TopTop