Our mission is to evaluate legal, tax, social, and economic influences on forest resource management and investment, and to develop guidelines that will support the sustainable management of forests.
The most recent mission for SRS-4804 is to improve the economic foundation for natural resource policy and management through research in the following problem areas:
- Economics of Forest Disturbances — Develop joint economic-ecological knowledge of forest disturbance processes (wildfires, insect outbreaks, severe storms) across multiple temporal and spatial scales and understand how policy and management interventions affect economic outcomes under current and changing climatic conditions.
- Forest Policies, Programs and Taxes — Evaluate policies, programs and taxes that influence forests, forest landowners, forest management, and forest ecosystem services.
- Forest Products Markets and Trade — Develop fundamental economic knowledge on the supply and demand conditions for forest products across multiple scales and understand how international trade affects timber product markets in the U.S.
- Forest Ecosystem Services Economics and Policy — Develop fundamental economic knowledge of the supply and demand of market and non-market ecosystem services provided by forests to assist in the development of policies at the local, regional and national levels.
View our Unit Charter document →
News & Events
Promoting Ecosystem Services with State Property Tax Programs
Every state in the U.S. offers tax breaks to forest landowners. But the details vary significantly – which makes it hard for policymakers to compare the programs, as a team of researchers from the USDA Forest Service and the University of Minnesota has shown.
Latest Publications
- Financial analysis and comparison of smallholder forest and state forest enterprise plantations in Central Vietnam
Frey, G.E. ; Cubbage, F.W. ; Ha, T.T.T. ; Davis, R.R. ; Carle, J.B. ; Thon, V.X. ; Dzung, N.V. - Agroforestry land-use economic yield and risk (ALLEY) model 2.0: a computer suite to simulate and compare stochastic yield and returns of alley crop, monocrop, and pine plantation systems in the U.S
Frey, Gregory E.; Cary, Michael A.; Goodwin, Barry K.; Mercer, D. Evan. - The potential for a backward-bending supply curve of non-timber forest products: An empirical case study of wild American ginseng production
Frey, Gregory E.; Chamberlain, James L.; Prestemon, Jeffrey P. - Annotated bibliography on the impacts of size and scale of silvopasture in the Southeastern U.S.A
Frey, Gregory E.; Comer, Marcus M. - Silvopasture case studies in North Carolina and Virginia
Frey, Gregory E.; Fike, John H.