Thinning And Prescribed Fire And Projected Trends In Wood Product Potential Financial Return And Fire Hazard In New Mexico

This work was undertaken under a joint fire science project S2Assessing the need, costs, and potential benefits of prescribed fire and mechanical treatments to reduce fire hazard. S3 This paper compares the future mix of timber projects under two treatment scenarios for New Mexico. We developed and demonstrated an analytical method that uses readily available tools to evaluate pre- and posttreatment stand conditions; size, species, and volume of merchantable wood removed during thinnings; size and volume of submerchantable wood cut during treatments; and financial returns of prescriptions that are applied repeatedly over a 90-year period.