PARENT SESSION
OOS 3: Valuation of Ecological Resources: Integration of Ecology and Socio-economics to Inform Environmental Decisions.
Organized by: LA Kapustka, RG Stahl, WR Munns, and RJF Bruins
Monday, August 2, 8:00 AM to 11:30 AM, Meeting Room E 145.

Challenges of a proposed new approach to resource valuation for wildland fire management.

Joy, Chester^*,1, ¹ United States General Accounting Office, Washington, DC

ABSTRACT- The increasing number of uncharacteristically large, intense wildland fires in recent years is in large part a decades-lagged response to a century of human disruptions in this natural disturbance cycle. Consequent mounting losses of human life, property, and important ecosystem attributes, as well as unprecedented response costs, pose pressing challenges to traditional approaches and decision support tools used by public and private land managers. The Department of the Interior and the Forest Service are developing a new, risk-assessment-based approach to cost-effectively restoring the natural ecological role of fire and protecting critically-threatened human and ecological values framed around (1) Risk--i.e., likely incidence of fire based on seasonally-adjusted natural or modified fire regime; (2) Hazard--i.e., likely behavior of fire based on fuels, topography, and weather; and (3) Value--i.e., what natural or human features are thereby threatened. The approach discards past assigning of monetary values to resources in favor of formulating choices between differently composed, varyingly-priced market baskets of integrated, multi-scale outcomes keyed to desired future conditions identified in statutorily-based land and resource management plans. Prices are expressed as different appropriations levels. Tens of millions of dollars are projected in system development costs over the next five years, with tens of billions of dollars in program costs identified as dependent on its robustness. Further refinement and application of this approach must answer key questions about (1) the treatment of scientific and stochastic uncertainty, (2) appropriate spatial and temporal scales at which outcomes and decisions should be holisitcally integrated, (3) implications for information architecture, and (4) optimizing NEPA and ESA processes. These formidable hurdles notwithstanding, the new approach promises to yield not only perhaps greater cost-effectiveness, but also needed greater transparency in Congressional and agency decision-making.

Key words: risk assessment, cost-effectiveness, wildfire, resource valuation