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
Lumber Builds the Future
“Lumber and economic growth are tightly connected,” says USDA Forest Service scientist Jeffrey Prestemon. “At a certain rate of GDP growth, you get a certain path of lumber consumption.”
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. - Annotated bibliography on the impacts of size and scale of silvopasture in the Southeastern U.S.A
Frey, Gregory E.; Comer, Marcus M. - Copula-based nonlinear modeling of the law of one price for lumber products
Goodwin, Barry K.; Holt, Matthew T.; Önel, Gülcan ; Prestemon, Jeffrey P. - State property tax programs promoting sustainable forests in the United States: A review of program structure and administration
Kilgore, Michael ; Ellefson, Paul ; Funk, Travis ; Frey, Gregory E. - Review of the harvesting and extraction program within the National Alliance for Advanced Biofuels and Bioproducts
Marrone, Babetta L.; Lacey, Ronald E.; Anderson, Daniel B.; Bonner, James ; Coons, Jim ; Dale, Taraka ; Downes, Cara Meghan; Fernando, Sandun ; Fuller, Christopher ; Goodall, Brian ; Holladay, Johnathan E.; Kadam, Kiran ; Kalb, Daniel ; Liu, Wei ; Mott, John B.; Nikolov, Zivko ; Ogden, Kimberly L.; Sayre, Richard T.; Trewyn, Brian G.; Olivares, José A.