Forest product market conditions mediate the scale and benefits of sustainable forest management in the Tahoe-Central Sierra Region

Abstract

Forests in the Western United States face escalating threats from wildfire, pest outbreaks, and drought, leading experts and policymakers to call for extensive forest management to promote forest resilience and reduce wildfire risk. High treatment costs represent a major choke point to achieving forest management goals, but selling timber and biomass from forest thinning can offset costs and provide the revenue to help rapidly scale management actions. In this study, we assess how forest product market conditions influence the economic feasibility and scale of forest management by modeling treatment potential across a Northern Sierra Nevada landscape using the US Forest Service's BioSum tool. We evaluate treatment outcomes across nine economic scenarios, incorporating wood and biomass price variations and treatment subsidies. Results indicate that baseline pricing assumptions facilitate aggressive forest treatment where thinning is feasible and needed, but a 50 % drop in forest product prices led to a one-third decline in treated area. These reductions are completely offset by a $500/acre treatment subsidy, suggesting that subsidies could serve as a ‘price floor’ to maintain treatment levels through market fluctuations. Optimal, cost-effective treatments overwhelmingly utilized prescribed fire following thinning, emphasizing the role of fire-inclusive approaches for forest treatment. While study findings indicate that forest product markets can support landscape-scale treatments, the capacity of regional processing facilities currently limits full utilization of forest products, underscoring the importance of expanding wood and biomass utilization infrastructure to realize the potential of market-driven strategies for improving forest resilience in the Sierra Nevada and similar fire-prone regions.