The Economics of management effort in planted forests: an empirical analysis of fertilization and thinning prescriptions of Pinus taeda in the US South

If a landowner‘s main objective is to maximize his/her profits from planted forest investments, questions such as when and where exactly they should fertilize, thin and clearcut must be answered. We take advantage of an experiment established in 5 different states in the US South. Forest inventory data was collected for different combinations of thinning densities where some of them received fertilization. We use the Land Expectation Value methodology where our assumptions are the infinite amount of Pine rotations while costs and stumpage prices are known and constant, and markets are perfect. One of the main results we found is that fertilization has a decreasing marginal benefit on site index quality.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.S.

Level thesis:degree_level

masters

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Forest Economics

Department dc:contributor.department

Forest Resources and Environmental Conservation

Grantor dc:publisher

Virginia Tech

Year dc:date.issued

2021

Author dc:creator

• Sartori, Pedro J.

Chairs dc:contributor.committeechair

• Schons, Stella Z.
• Sullivan, Jay

Committee member dc:contributor.committeemember

• Barrett, Scott

• Fertilization
• Thinning
• Site Index
• Land Expectation Value

Statement dc:rights

• Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Language dc:language.iso

en_US

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/10919/102348

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/102348