Maddie Watts, Aaron Russell, Saroj Adhikari, John Weir, Omkar Joshi
{"title":"Analysis of the Cost and Cost Components of Conducting Prescribed Fires in the Great Plains","authors":"Maddie Watts, Aaron Russell, Saroj Adhikari, John Weir, Omkar Joshi","doi":"10.1016/j.rama.2023.11.002","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Fire is a naturally occurring process in the Great Plains and was anthropologically applied first by Native Americans and now by a diverse group of landholder types. Fire is a critical tool to help restore historical fire regimes in the region and maintain and grow benefits for agricultural outputs, risk reduction, and ecosystem maintenance. With the Great Plains dominated by private landholdings, lowering barriers to adoption of prescribed burning is important for increasing its use. Costs are a crucial decision element in adoption and regular use of prescribed burning. Using the responses from an Internet-based survey of prescribed burn professionals in the Great Plains, multivariate regression analysis based on cost can identify critical factors and behaviors. The average cost for a prescribed burn in this study is $11.37 per acre, which is comparatively less expensive than numbers reported elsewhere. Seven significant associated variables emerged including number of burns and acreage, firebreak type, and fuel characteristics. The results suggest that economies of scale play an important role in the cost of prescribed burning. Through the identification of the cost of prescribed burning and the factors that influence it, landowners, environmental managers, prescribed burn professionals, and government agencies in the Great Plains will be able to better understand and implement prescribed burns as part of their land management plans.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":49634,"journal":{"name":"Rangeland Ecology & Management","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.4000,"publicationDate":"2023-12-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1550742423001240/pdfft?md5=a271710a0194c4100ab925987353081b&pid=1-s2.0-S1550742423001240-main.pdf","citationCount":"1","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Rangeland Ecology & Management","FirstCategoryId":"93","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1550742423001240","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"ECOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 1
Abstract
Fire is a naturally occurring process in the Great Plains and was anthropologically applied first by Native Americans and now by a diverse group of landholder types. Fire is a critical tool to help restore historical fire regimes in the region and maintain and grow benefits for agricultural outputs, risk reduction, and ecosystem maintenance. With the Great Plains dominated by private landholdings, lowering barriers to adoption of prescribed burning is important for increasing its use. Costs are a crucial decision element in adoption and regular use of prescribed burning. Using the responses from an Internet-based survey of prescribed burn professionals in the Great Plains, multivariate regression analysis based on cost can identify critical factors and behaviors. The average cost for a prescribed burn in this study is $11.37 per acre, which is comparatively less expensive than numbers reported elsewhere. Seven significant associated variables emerged including number of burns and acreage, firebreak type, and fuel characteristics. The results suggest that economies of scale play an important role in the cost of prescribed burning. Through the identification of the cost of prescribed burning and the factors that influence it, landowners, environmental managers, prescribed burn professionals, and government agencies in the Great Plains will be able to better understand and implement prescribed burns as part of their land management plans.
期刊介绍:
Rangeland Ecology & Management publishes all topics-including ecology, management, socioeconomic and policy-pertaining to global rangelands. The journal''s mission is to inform academics, ecosystem managers and policy makers of science-based information to promote sound rangeland stewardship. Author submissions are published in five manuscript categories: original research papers, high-profile forum topics, concept syntheses, as well as research and technical notes.
Rangelands represent approximately 50% of the Earth''s land area and provision multiple ecosystem services for large human populations. This expansive and diverse land area functions as coupled human-ecological systems. Knowledge of both social and biophysical system components and their interactions represent the foundation for informed rangeland stewardship. Rangeland Ecology & Management uniquely integrates information from multiple system components to address current and pending challenges confronting global rangelands.