A multi-benefit framework for funding forest management in fire-driven ecosystems across the Western U.S.

Forests across the Western U.S. face unprecedented risk due to historic fire exclusion, environmental degradation, and climate change.

Valuing the benefits of forest restoration on enhancing hydropower and water supply in California's Sierra Nevada.

Forest restoration through mechanical thinning, prescribed burning, and other management actions is vital to improving forest resilience to fire and drought across the Western United States, and yields benefits that can be monetized, including improvements in water supply and hydropower. Using California's Sierra Nevada as a study area, we assess the water and energy benefits of forest-restoration projects. By using a scalable top-down approach to track annual evapotranspiration following forest disturbance, coupled with hydropower simulations that include energy-price information, and marginal prices for water sales, we project the potential economic benefits of hydropower and water sales accruing to water-rights holders.

A techno-economic analysis of biochar production and the bioeconomy for orchard biomass.

It is well established that the global practice of burning crop residues, such as orchard biomass, harms human health and the environment. A bioeconomy for orchard biomass may reduce open burning, facilitate the recovery of nutrients that improve soil health, and boost economic growth. We present a techno-economic analysis for converting orchard waste into biochar, a charcoal-like substance that shows promise for improving soil health, but that is considered an experimental product with emerging efficacy and limited market demand.

Abatement costs of soil conservation in China's Loess Plateau: balancing income with conservation in an agricultural system.

This study proposes the use of marginal abatement cost curves to calculate environmental damages of agricultural systems in China's Loess Plateau. Total system costs and revenues, management characteristics and pollution attributes are imputed into a directional output distance function, which is then used to determine shadow prices and abatement cost curves for soil and nitrogen loss. Marginal abatement costs curves are an effective way to compare economic and conservation tradeoffs when field-specific data are scarce.

Mountain substitutability and peak load pricing of high alpine peaks as a management tool to reduce environmental damage: a contingent valuation study.

High alpine peaks throughout the world are under increasing environmental pressure from hikers, trekkers, and climbers. Colorado's "Fourteeners", peaks with summits above 14,000 feet are no exception. Most of these peaks have no entrance fees, and reach ecological and social carrying capacity on weekends.