![forest fire](/sites/g/files/dgvnsk6781/files/styles/sf_landscape_16x9/public/media/images/im1%20%281%29.png?h=bc36de61&itok=-fuLWdB0)
Lab Seminar: Modeling externalities from forest management and fire mitigation
Frederik Strabo presented preliminary work modeling how competition between adjacent landowners can shape their incentives to invest in forest fire prevention. The combination of historical land use practices and climate change have greatly increased the risk and severity of forest fires. Landowners can mitigate these risks by investing in costly interventions like forest thinning. They can also adjust to these risks by changing when (and if) they harvest the trees in their forests. The increasing fire risk creates an incentive to invest in tree thinning and harvest timber earlier in the growth cycle. However, landowners do not internalize all of the benefits of these practices because the risk of fire is shared between adjacent properties. Frederik showed how a classic model of forest management could be extended to capture the effect of increased fire risk and spillovers between adjacent landowners on forest management practices.