The Economic Value of Fuel Treatments: A Review of the Recent Literature for Fuel Treatment Planning

This review synthesizes the scientific literature on fuel treatment economics published since 2013 with a focus its implications for land managers and policy makers. We whether treatments are financially viable management agencies at time of implementation, as well over lifespan effectiveness. also that considers broad benefits across multiple sectors society. Most studies find not based revenue generated from forest products, biomass, or carbon credits implementation. Fuel tend to be future costs savings (fire suppression rehabilitation costs) averted losses in products wildfire Similarly, most consider beyond those accruing any single category (e.g., damage structures infrastructure, critical watersheds, air quality, ecosystem values) sufficient offset costs. Overall, recent suggests projects more likely have exceed if they generate categories simultaneously. The documents tremendous variability regions between within regions, which poses challenge reaching general conclusions about programmatic scales, practitioners should proceed caution when trying extrapolate prospective project estimates reported previous literature.