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Dissertation_Bingcai Liu_Dec 22.pdf (2.9 MB)

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Three Essays on the Economics of Forest Species Movement, Inter-regional Leakage, and Deforestation

Liu, Bingcai
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2172-0918
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1669923962916105

Abstract Details

2022, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, Agricultural, Environmental and Developmental Economics.
The forest ecosystem can be affected by forest distribution changes, management changes, and forest loss. Change to forest ecosystems is not only an environmental science problem but also an economic problem since both market and policy changes can influence forest ecosystems. The three chapters of my dissertation discuss the impacts of timber market change on forest distribution, explore how forest policy change affects forest planting investments in another region, and illustrate the relationship between overlapping tenure and forest loss. The first chapter examines the distribution and movement of forest species in the Eastern and Southeastern US with a spatial logistic model and assesses how natural and socioeconomic factors have influenced forest migration. In this research, we derive a 30-year presence/absence dataset from the Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) database. The species distribution analysis suggests that besides climatological and geophysical factors, socioeconomic factors can also impact the probability of the presence of tree species. Furthermore, the impact of timber prices varies on trees of different ages. This research highlights how timber market variations can impact forest distribution by influencing landowners’ management decisions. Our findings highlight the unintended environmental consequences of changes in timber and agriculture markets. The environmental policies, such as habitat protection and forest preservation, should take timber market consequences into consideration The second chapter examines how federal timber harvesting restrictions in the Pacific Northwest in the early 1990s resulted in an increase in softwood planting in the Southern US. This is one of few papers that discuss the change in investment in planting caused by a policy change in another region. This study develops a unique dataset of county-level loblolly planting derived from historical timber inventory data. The results indicate that the loblolly planting area in the Southern US increased significantly after the timber harvest restriction was implemented in the Pacific Northwest. The results suggest that landowners will invest in planting additional acreage besides routine replanting if a policy leads to significantly higher demand expectations, even though the policy is implemented somewhere across the country. And the increase in planting can compensate for the additional harvest caused by the substitution effect. My findings can also provide reference to carbon leakage evaluation for policy change, while most previous studies only consider the leakage effects from additional harvest but ignored the increase of planting caused by forest preservation policies. The third chapter measures how the establishment of logging and mining concessions in public forests impact deforestation and forest degradation. In Guyana, individuals and companies can apply for time-limited extraction rights for timber logging and mining through a concession system. At the same time, a lack of integrated land use planning often leads to overlapping extractive and forest use rights for logging and mining. Overlapping land rights creates uncertainty and limits investments toward sustainable forest management, affecting deforestation and degradation rates. Using spatial multinomial logistic regression models, in this research, we examine the 31-year deforestation and degradation on three types of land tenures (timber-only, mining-only, and overlapping concession). This study provides useful policy implications related to forest management in Guyana. The positive correlations between all types of concessions and deforestation suggest that all kinds of production activities in Guyana can cause degradation and deforestation. The results of overlapping concession areas suggest that separating the controlled field of timber and mining concessions can help create clear management duties and remove obstacles towards forest conservation and restoration.
Brent Sohngen (Advisor)
H. Allen Klaiber (Committee Member)
Daniela A. Miteva (Committee Member)
128 p.
Environmental Economics; Forestry
forest management; forest movement; leakage; loblolly planting; deforestation; overlapping concessions

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Citations

  • Liu, B. (2022). Three Essays on the Economics of Forest Species Movement, Inter-regional Leakage, and Deforestation [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1669923962916105

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Liu, Bingcai. Three Essays on the Economics of Forest Species Movement, Inter-regional Leakage, and Deforestation. 2022. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1669923962916105.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Liu, Bingcai. "Three Essays on the Economics of Forest Species Movement, Inter-regional Leakage, and Deforestation." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2022. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1669923962916105

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1669923962916105
70
© 2022, some rights reserved.Creative Commons License Three Essays on the Economics of Forest Species Movement, Inter-regional Leakage, and Deforestation by Bingcai Liu is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at etd.ohiolink.edu.
This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.