256 research outputs found
International Timber Markets
No full textThe aim of this dissertation is to explore three prominent topics of international timberland market research. Chapter One examines whether United States, South and Central America, and Oceania timberland markets have integrated per-acre timberland values. Chapter Two focuses on international trade relations between the leading tropical sawnwood importing and processing European Union countries – France, Germany, and Italy – and the Sub-Saharan African countries through the evaluation of import demand elasticities. Chapter Three investigates “price-leading” behavior in global and U.S. regional markets utilizing the Granger-Causality approach
Fine Tuning the Environmental Benefits Index to Achieve Cost Savings for the Conservation Reserve Program
No full textThe Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) is the largest conservation program in the United States and was established in 1985. Over time, the conservation objectives of the program have broadened to include wildlife habitat, air quality, and water quality. Changes to the enrollment mechanism were made to improve the economic efficiency of the program by implementing the Environmental Benefits Index (EBI). One of the ways farmers can increase their likelihood of being accepted into the CRP is offering a discount to the maximum rent payment for enrollment into the CRP. This study examines how farmer bidding behavior changes when the relative weighting of offering a rental payment discount increases in importance when determining which applicants are accepted into the CRP. The findings of this study indicate that a small change to the relative weighting does have an effect on farmers’ willingness to offer a discount and thus improve the economic efficiency of the CRP
Economic Analysis of Habitat Conservation Banking in the United States
No full textThe Endangered Species Act (ESA) is probably the most powerful environmental law ever enacted in the United States and is often portrayed as one of the most extreme forms of government intervention. Private landowners often avoid management activities that can potentially attract endangered species into their land and probably take actions to eliminate endangered species habitats. Several landowner incentive programs have been implemented by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to encourage landowner to manage their land in ways that provide ecosystem services to promote the recovery of listed species.
Habitat conservation banking offers financial incentives to landowners in exchange for managing land in a way that provides habitat for endangered species. This feature of the market-based approach is generating specific price signals for entrepreneurs to get involved in solving environmental issues. The United States pioneered habitat conservation banking program and is recognized as a leader in implementing biodiversity offsets as a means to conserve endangered species. Few studies have evaluated the performance of habitat conservation banking market. However, most of those studies were conducted a decade ago, except recent survey by Department of Interior (DOI).
In the first chapter, we fill the gap by quantifying the number of total banks, conservation credit supply, sales, and analyze the trends and the characteristics of conservation banks. As of December 2015, we find 137 conservation banks conserving some 153,000 acres of land. Nearly, 519,540 conservation credits were generated from 137 banks. Based on 2,134 transactions record, some 71,365 credits were sold in last 21 years. About 66% of conservation credits were sold by private companies, and credit price ranges between 205,055 per credit. This chapter concludes that habitat conservation banking has become a business-based habitat planning system and that large urban areas tend to have the highest demand for conservation credits, and organizations in these urban areas are willing to pay the highest prices per credit.
The second chapter presents an econometric analysis of factors influencing demand and supply of the conservation credit. The results show that demand and supply coefficient estimates are statistically significant with expected signs and are inelastic to price, suggesting that conservation credit price changes are not likely to lead to significant changes in the quantity of credit demand. Inverse price and quantity relation show the actual distribution of price in the market. Furthermore, the results suggest that the marginal production of conservation credit is likely to increase over time with more land area allocated for conservation bank and likely to decrease with increased in land value.
The third chapter uses hedonics to explores the relationship between credit prices and the characteristics of credits. This approach allows an implicit price to be estimated for each covariate. Private bank ownership, species types, the number of listed endangered species, and time factors were significant predictors of credit price. These results should be useful for landowners, bankers, and investors interested in enhancing the marketability of their land and understanding the effect of management actions.
Chapter four assesses the habitat conservation banking project investment by examining the costs structure, revenue, and profitability of several conservation banks. We calculated the net present value of selected numbers of conservation bank located in California at the discount rates of 8%. Results show that the all eight selected conservation banks’ NPV appears to be positive. Our findings suggest that the investment in habitat conservation banking is not only profitable but also yield high returns. Those landowners who may have been discouraged because of lack of knowledge and data and from the fear that presence of endangered species habitat in their land would result in a regulatory compliance can be reassured from our finding that habitat conservation banking can be a perspective market for financial incentives.
Finally, we conclude that habitat conservation banking is dynamic and has a monopolistic market structure or imperfect competition in certain areas. An advance econometric model that incorporates either the dynamic or oligopolistic aspects of the habitat conservation banking market, or both, seems to be a more promising prospect for future research
Economic Analysis of Institutional Timberland Ownership in the United States
No full textThe rise of institutional timberland ownership has led to a significant change in the structure and conduct of timber industry and forest management in the country. Understanding how industrial timberland sales affect the shareholder values of forest products firms, what factors influence landowners’ harvest and reforestation activities, and if different ownerships have an impact on timber supply and silvicultural practices, is critical for developing policies to improve forest sustainability.
In the first study, we use an event study to investigate the impact of industrial timberland sales from 1997 to 2007 on shareholder values of major U.S. forest products firms. Cross-sectional regression analysis and the Capital Asset Pricing Model are used to examine factors influencing changes in market capitalization and systematic risk before and after the sales. The average cumulative abnormal rates of returns associated with timberland sales are found to be positive for all firms, and the resulting change in capitalization is related to these firms’ total asset and debt. The systematic risk for these firms changed little or increased slightly after the timberland sales.
The second and third studies use USDA Forest Service Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) forest inventory data in nine southern states. In the second study, we use a two-period harvest choice model to explain the determinants of timber harvesting choices and estimate price elasticity of timber supply in response to market signal across different ownerships. We find that timber harvest choices are positively related to current timber value, stand volume, and net growth volume, and negatively associated with future timber value, and squared terms of stand volume and net growth volume across four ownership categories (i.e., forest industry, TIMOs, REITs, and NIPF landowners). Also, institutional timberland owners have smaller timber supply elasticities for two forest products than forest industry and NIPF landowners.
In the third study, we apply a binomial logit model to investigate the impact of timberland ownership on reforestation effort. We find that the propensity to reforest is different across three ownership categories. The probability of reforestation is 0.83 for institutional owners, 0.80 for forest industry owners, and 0.69 for NIPF landowners. The results suggest that different timberland ownerships have an impact on reforestation activities and that the institutional timberland owners limited investment period of 8-15 years do not hinder their efforts with respect to reforestation and stewardship in forest management
Land-use Changes, Forest Type Changes, and Related Environmental Concerns in the Southern U.S.
No full textThe U.S. South covers roughly 24 percent of the total land area and 30 percent of the unreserved forest area of the United States. During the past few decades, the region has experienced dramatic land use as well as forest type changes due to rapid economic and population growth, and different returns in land uses. These kinds of changes, though meeting the needs of economic development, may result in severe environmental degradation such as air and water pollution, loss of biodiversity, wildlife habitat fragmentation, and increased flooding, which will threaten the environment. This dissertation includes three essays to address these kinds of land use and environmental changes from economic perspectives.
The first essay (chapter 2) presents an empirical analysis of the contributing factors that driven land use and land use changes in the South by applying a random parameter logit (RPL) model using the USDA National Resources Inventory (NRI) 1982-1997 five-year interval land use and land quality data. Results indicate that land use and land use changes in the US South follow the classic land-use theory that higher economic returns cause lands to transit to or to remain in a certain use. Human disturbance is another main factor that results in the loss of rural lands. However, land use transition probabilities with respect to economic returns and population density are both inelastic. The importance of each driving factor and the policy implications are addressed and discussed as well.
The second essay (chapter 3) projects the future distribution of forest types in the South by examining the factors that directly or indirectly influence historical forest type changes using a two-stage discrete choice model, and explores the environmental consequences caused by forest type transition in terms of carbon sequestration on forest lands. Projection results indicate that the area of pine plantation will keep increasing, with a total increase rate of 58 percent during 1997-2047, and the areas of natural pine and hardwoods will decline. Comparing the projections of carbon stocks on forest lands with and without forest type transition, carbon storage from the dramatic change of increase of planted pine, and decline of other forest types are not significantly different from that without forest type transition.
The third essay (chapter 4) explores how land use change decisions are determined by private landowners when property taxes are involved in land use management strategy. Taking North Georgia as the empirical study area, a random parameter logit model is applied to examine how property tax, especially the current use valuation property tax policy influences landowners’ land use change decisions. Results indicate that property taxes have a negative impact on landowner’s land use and land use change decisions, which means that the higher the property tax for a land use, the lower the probability of lands converting to or remaining in that use. It is inelastic and varies among plots. Without the current use valuation assessment property tax policy, there would be an extra 8,000 acres croplands, an extra 10,000 acres pasture lands, and an extra 10,000 acres of forest decrease in North Georgia, which is about 0.25 % of the total area of rural lands of North Georgia
Essays of Forestry Investments in the US and Stumpage Market in the US South
No full textIn 2005, nearly $30 billion of American forest land in the hands of institutional investors may suggest that timberland is a good portfolio diversifier. However, this statement may be overstated because forestry investments may have correlations with non-forestry assets in the long run. In addition, timberland investment is largely determined by stumpage market. Moreover, the differentiated ownerships make the analysis of the stumpage market more complicated. This study investigates the relationships between forestry and non-forestry instruments in the US while examining pulpwood market and stumpage supply by differentiated ownerships in the US South.
Chapter 1 the introduction identifies research problems and presents research objectives. Chapter 2 presents a literature review focusing on the major empirical analyses of timberland investment and stumpage market.
Chapter 3 investigates the short-run and long-run correlations between forestry and non-forestry assets in the US using quarterly data from January 1992 to July 2006. The results of capital asset pricing model (CAPM) show that the eight investment vehicles (timberland, timber, farmland, national property index, treasury bill for 3-month, deposit, government bond for 30 years, and gold) have lower risk and lower relationship with S&P 500 in the short run. The results of cointegration analysis show that cointegrated relationships exist between timberland, timber price, and the financial assets.
Chapter 4 examines the determinants of pine pulpwood supply and demand in the southern US using annual data from 1950 to 2002 with three-stage least squares (3SLS) regression techniques. The results of SSE model show that price elasticities of supply of and demand for pine pulpwood are relatively small, which is consistent with previous studies for the US South. In addition, the significant substitution between pulpwood stumpage and energy use was found with an elasticity of -0.35.
Chapter 5 focuses on the short run price elasticities for stumpage market by comparing forest industry (FI) and non-industrial private forest (NIPF) using a two-stage least squares (2SLS) techniques with time series data from 1953 to 2002. The estimated results show that supply price elasticities of 0.70 for sawtimber and 0.90 for pulpwood for FI owners are larger than those of 0.29 for sawtimber and 0.32 for pulpwood for NIPF owners, which, in general, are within the price elasticity range from previous studies.
Finally, chapter 6 summarizes the major findings of this study and some policy implications. Recommendations for further research are also addressed in this chapter.
Key words: Timberland return, capital asset pricing model, co-integration, simultaneous system of equations, profit maximization model, price elasticit
Factors Influencing Tropical Forest Conservation: Evidence from the W Reserve
No full textWe analyzed the factors that influence tropical forest resource conservation using the W Reserve in West Africa as the case study. Specifically, we first characterized the forms of pressure faced by the Reserve from the population in the villages within its periphery. Second, we characterized the villages in the Reserve periphery based on their socioeconomic and institutional characteristics using cluster analysis. Third, we identified based on the villages characteristics, the factors that could explain its degradation using Poisson regression model, Negative Binomial Regression model, linear and non-linear Seemingly Unrelated Regression (SUR) model.
Our result indicates that illegal cattle ranching is the most dominant form of pressure faced by the Reserve from the population in the villages within its periphery, and illegal logging the lowest form. Second, four types of villages were observed in the region with three discriminating factors, namely populations, number of non-governmental organizations promoting nature preservation, and average farm size. Third, three major factors that influence the Reserve’ degradation have been identified as socioeconomic characteristics, institutional organization, and the location of the villages. Particularly, the variables distance and average farm size in the villages were identified as the factors that influence illegal farming activities in the Reserve. Illegal cattle ranching activities were influenced by the number of non-governmental organizations, the distance, and the existence of checkpoints between the Reserve and the villages. Population and distance were identified as the factors that influence poaching activities while illegal logging was influenced only by the distance that separates the Reserve and the villages in its periphery
Essays on Forest Economics: Carbon Markets and Policy Analyses
No full textThis research examines how carbon markets, specifically Compliance Carbon Markets (CCMs) and Voluntary Carbon Markets (VCMs), can serve as an additional source of revenue for forest landowners and as policy tools to support green innovation and emissions reduction in response to global climate change efforts. Using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) approach, the first chapter reviews the literature on forest carbon markets from 2005 to 2024, analyzing trends, challenges, and future directions through a systematic review and bibliometric analysis of publications from Scopus and Web of Science databases. The study highlights that those countries with strong economies and environmental focus lead in research, with key journals such as Energy Policy, Forest Policy and Economics and Carbon Management contributing significantly. Trending topics include carbon, forestry, climate change, carbon sequestration, commerce, carbon emissions, and forest management, while the study also identifies and examines some misconceptions within the forest carbon markets literature and highlights the challenges and opportunities for expanding the forest carbon market in the future.
The second chapter examines how forest landowners in the U.S. South can trade carbon credits and how rising carbon prices could encourage shifts from marginal agricultural land to forest land. By comparing forest land rent (FLR) and agricultural land rent (ALR) under different carbon price scenarios, the chapter finds that pine plantations become more profitable than agriculture on marginal land showing that 6.5, 6.5, and 6.6 million hectares of marginal agricultural land in the U.S. South can transition to forest land from loblolly, shortleaf, and slash plantations, respectively, at $6.53 /tCO2e, while hardwood plantations require higher prices and show more limited potential.
The third chapter assesses the impact of California's cap-and-trade program (CATP) on green innovation using environmental patents as a proxy. Using a Difference-in-Differences approach (DID) with county-level data (2000 to 2022) from California and neighboring states, the study finds that CATP significantly boosts green innovation, especially in eastern, densely populated counties and those at the California-Nevada border. State and city-level analyses confirm these results, and various robustness checks support the reliability of the findings.
The final chapter evaluates the effects of CATP on emissions, economic growth, air quality, and health outcomes. Using a difference-in-differences method with 2010–2019 county-level data, we find that CATP reduced per capita total direct and CO₂ emissions while boosting GDP and employment in California’s border counties. State-level synthetic control analysis (1960–2019) shows significant emission reductions only in the transportation sector. Health co-benefits include fewer respiratory and cardiovascular hospitalizations and deaths, despite modest air quality improvements. A few robustness checks including parallel trend, placebo test and heterogeneity tests validate these findings
LIPUS Responsive Dopamine-Modified PVDF Piezoelectric Nanofiber Membrane for Full-Thickness Skin Wound Healing
No full textZhiying Zhang,1,* Lijun Liu,1,* Huan Wang,2,* Wangni Xie,1 Wenhao Zhai,1 Linlin Wen,1 Boya Zhang,1 Kexuan Liu,1 Xue Zhang,1 Shuchen Liu,1 Lei Huang,1 Daowei Li,1 Yanmin Zhou1 1Jilin Provincial Key Laboratory of Tooth Development and Bone Remodeling, Hospital of Stomatology, Jilin University, Changchun, 130021, People’s Republic of China; 2State Key Laboratory of Rare Earth Resources Utilization and Laboratory of Chemical Biology, Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changchun, 130022, People’s Republic of China*These authors contributed equally to this workCorrespondence: Daowei Li, Email [email protected] Yanmin Zhou, Email [email protected]: Large full-thickness skin wounds pose significant challenges, particularly in achieving scar-free healing and the regeneration of skin appendages. This study introduces a portable approach for promoting scarless healing and skin appendage regeneration by utilizing low-intensity pulsed ultrasound (LIPUS) activated piezoelectric electrospun membranes to modulate the local electrical environment.Methods: Dopamine-modified polyvinylidene fluoride (DA/PVDF) nanomembranes were fabricated via electrospinning, followed by piezoelectric characterization under varying LIPUS stimulation. Cell adhesion was examined using SEM and laser confocal microscopy to assess surface interactions. Cell proliferation and migration were further analyzed using the CCK-8 assay and Transwell migration assay, respectively. Finally, the effects of DA/PVDF membranes on full-thickness skin defect healing were tested in a mouse model. The healing process was documented with photographs, and functional skin regeneration was evaluated through histological analysis.Results: The DA/PVDF nanomembranes had an average diameter of 732 ± 232 nm and generated a voltage of 450 mV under LIPUS stimulation, a 1.28-fold increase compared to PVDF membranes alone. In vitro, LIPUS-activated membranes enhanced cell adhesion and proliferation, resulting in a 1.14-fold increase in cell growth over three days. The transwell migration assays showed 244.67 ± 7.85 migrated cells. In vivo, the DA/PVDF+LIPUS group exhibited significantly higher wound healing rates, with improved epidermal regeneration, collagen fiber deposition and remodeling, and enhanced blood vessel and skin appendage formation.Conclusion: DA modification enhances the piezoelectric properties of PVDF membranes, boosting cell adhesion and promoting dermal and vascular regeneration. LIPUS-generated mechanical waves effectively stimulate membrane deformation, producing a localized electrical microenvironment that mimics the natural bioelectric field of skin and accelerates functional wound healing. Keywords: piezoelectric materials, dopamine, low-intensity pulsed ultrasound, skin wound healing, skin appendage regeneratio
Population Growth and Land Use Dynamics along Urban–Rural Gradient
No full textIn this study we apply a spatial conditional logit model to determine factors influencing land cover change in three contiguous counties in West Georgia between 1992 and 2001 using point (pixel) based observations of land characteristics. We found that accessibility to population and population growth affect not only development of rural lands and transition between agricultural and forestry uses, but also influence changes between forest types. The model could be used to project land use–land cover change at watershed or subwatershed level and thus serve as a valuable tool for county and city planners.conditional logit, land use change, population gravity index, spatial lag, Agribusiness, Labor and Human Capital, Land Economics/Use, Q15, Q23, R14,
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