Project Details

The direct and indirect economic value of nature-related recreation in Alberta in 1996 was worth over $1.4 billion. Thus, recreation activity is highly valued, and is an important component of the values at risk in the green area of the province. These economic values are well beyond the cost of replacing the provincial recreation infrastructure (e.g., provincial park facilities). Thus, the recreation values at risk include the levels of participation in activities, and their associated economic values. This project will investigate the relationship between forest fire management and forest-based recreation in Alberta. The main goal of the project is to provide information to improve the forest fire management policies and practices. The major objectives are to: 1. Enhance and expand the inclusion of recreation values in a provincial zoning scheme, or values-at-risk map (VARM); 2. Incorporate in such schemes the dynamic inter-temporal relationships between forest fires and recreation participation; and 3. Incorporate recreation values into return on investment (ROI) analysis of selected fire management activities. The project has 3 components. The first involves a static analysis of recreation values at risk, utilizing existing data from existing sources, such as the National Survey on the Importance of Nature to Canadians (1996), and Alberta Parks. This component will develop models of participation in forest recreation and the economic values of recreation in a spatially explicit framework, for incorporation into the VARM. The second component involves the development of models to understand how fire affects participation over future time horizons. This knowledge will allow fire managers to use the VARM to project fire effects on recreation into the future, and thus incorporate fire and recreation dynamics into the allocation of fire management resources. The third component is to utilize the VARM and the dynamic models to examine returns on investments in some selected fire management activities (e.g., fire-smart forest management strategies).