Identifying Economically Feasible Priority Landscape Areas in Idaho for Funding Assistance Programs

Market coverage, or merchantability, is more than selling commodities. By offsetting expenditures, it provides an effective tool allowing forest managers to expand funding assistance to improve forest health, habitat, and water quality; reduce fire risk; and sustainably manage forest resources and services. This analysis narrows the focus to mill inputs and evaluates the forest products market extent and competition that exist in Idaho to better prioritize forest health improvement and fire mitigation funding programs. We identify priority landscape areas through market extent and market competition and classify each by quintiles for three harvested wood products (sawlogs, pulpwood, biomass). Generating revenues from selling harvested wood products where barely any markets exist or markets could expand with incentives would allow management projects to be done at a more extensive scope or a lower cost per area. The results can also be used to identify areas to invest in forest product manufacturing facilities. This is valuable information for decision-makers looking to direct public assistance funding toward projects that generate forest products. Study Implications: Allocating funds across competing uses is a fundamental task in forest policy and management. To do it in a way that best reduces threats to forest health and productivity while increasing the social, economic, and environmental benefits those forests provide is challenging. The primary goal of this study was to create a procurement zone or wood basket map that depicts the economically feasible forest regions to primary forest commodities in Idaho. This information can be useful in programs such as the Idaho Department of Lands Forest Action Plan revision, as the degree of merchantability of a given parcel can be helpful in funding prioritization. In addition, our results can be used to identify optimal locations for new investments, understand and estimate the woodshed/wood basket of various products, and visualize constraints of the feedstock supply chain. The methods used here for Idaho are easily transferable to other states and regions.