A United States View on Changes in Land Use and Land Values Affecting Sustainable Forest Management

Abstract

Summary With increasing opportunity costs of keeping land in forests because of increasing values for other land uses, such as for developed uses, forest ownership may become less attractive for some landowners and the return on investment less viable for both private and public landowners. This raises the question of what will become of the forests and the resources the forest supports, such as water and wildlife, if owners of the forests find it too costly to manage the forest. Land markets provide evidence on revealed behavior about what people are willing to actually pay for a bundle of rights necessary to gain access to land that can provide forest-based goods and services into perpetuity. However, owing to market failures and the nature of some forest land values, markets do not always reveal true forest land values, as discussed below. Allocation of land by use and cover types is a key determinant in sustainable forest management, with changes in land values providing important signals to land managers. Land valuation differs under market-oriented economies, emerging values in transition economies, and administered values in countries with command economies and is influenced by interactions between the environment and humans, including land ownership, use, and management.