Description

The work described in this paper examines the economic costs of thinning and prescribed burning to reduce fuel loading. Thinning costing is based on measurement of productive/scheduled hours, standard machine costing, plus analysis of volumes of timber harvested, extracted, and sold. Thinning costs will be used to evaluate an existing small tree harvesting model (ST Harvest). The authors are researching the treatment cost element of the Fire and Fire Surrogates Study, where three basic objectives have been outlined. (1) Quantify the costs of fire and fire surrogate treatments. (2) Over the life of the study, quantify the economic consequences on utilization of fire and fire treatments. (3) Develop and validate models, and successively refine recommendations for ecosystem management.