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Valuing Wildlands

Informally Refereed

Abstract

One of the central problems of land and water management is "the way in which scarce resources are allocated among alternative uses and users. The question is, of course, fundamental to economic models and modes of thought in ecology"(Rapport and Turner 1977). Many questions that are at the heart of environmental scape ecology and EcoRAs (the primary topics of this book), but also through resource valuation. The value of wildlands is derived from human use of resources, as well as ecological functions such as provision of habitat, that support nonuse or existence values of organisms, populations, communities, and ecosystems. Ecological valuation entails both the description of valued attributes of the environment, as well quantitative methods for comparing these attributes and alternative scenarios. The valuation of wildlands can support several types of decisions, such as which lands to conserve, which lands to develop, which waters to impound, how much flow to leave in rivers, which lands or waters to remediate, and which lands or waters to set aside for research. Moreover, various US federal agencies are increasingly required to evaluate benefits of conservation and environmental research programs, both of which rely on valuation methods. For example, the US Department of Agriculture evaluates benefits of its Conservation Reserve Program (USDA 2004), and the US Department of Defense is increasingly interested in valuing its lands that are exclusion zones or buffer areas for military training or testing (R. Pinkham, Booz Allen Hamilton, personal communication, September 2006

Citation

Efroymson, R.A.; Jager, H.I.; Hargrove, W.W. 2010. Valuing Wildlands. In: Kapustka, L.; Landis, W. eds. Environmental Risk Assessment and Management from a Landscape Perspective. John Wiley & Sons. 156-185.
https://www.fs.usda.gov/research/treesearch/36860