Fighting fire with fire: estimating the efficacy of wildfire mitigation programs using propensity scores |
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Authors: | David T Butry |
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Institution: | (1) Office of Applied Economics, Building and Fire Research Laboratory, National Institute of Standards and Technology, 100 Bureau Drive, Mailstop 8603, Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8603, USA |
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Abstract: | This paper examines the effect wildfire mitigation has on broad-scale wildfire behavior. Each year, hundreds of million of
dollars are spent on fire suppression and fuels management applications, yet little is known, quantitatively, of the returns
to these programs in terms of their impact on wildfire extent and intensity. This is especially true when considering that
wildfire management influences and reacts to several, often times confounding factors, including socioeconomic characteristics,
values at risk, heterogeneous landscapes, and climate. Due to the endogenous nature of suppression effort and fuels management
intensity and placement with wildfire behavior, traditional regression models may prove inadequate. Instead, I examine the
applicability of propensity score matching (PSM) techniques in modeling wildfire. This research makes several significant
contributions including: (1) applying techniques developed in labor economics and in epidemiology to evaluate the effects
of natural resource policies on landscapes, rather than on individuals; (2) providing a better understanding of the relationship
between wildfire mitigation strategies and their influence on broad-scale wildfire patterns; (3) quantifying the returns to
suppression and fuels management on wildfire behavior.
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Keywords: | Endogeneity Prescribed fire Propensity score Treatment effects Wildfire production functions |
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