Epsilon Open Archive

Abstract

This paper develops a stochastic dynamic model for the purpose of optimal site selection of habitats for an umbrella species in Sweden under conditions of uncertainty in the growth of habitat quality of established conservation areas and in acquisition costs. The numerical dynamic model builds on inputs from an ecological model of habitat development and an economic model of actual payments for biodiversity conservation in Swedish forests. The results point at the importance of including both types of uncertainties; total social costs for achieving given habitat targets under probabilistic constraints increase three fold as compared with the deterministic case. Another effect of the introduction of uncertainty is the earlier establishment of habitats due to need of extra establishments in order to achieve the target with a certain probability. When comparing optimal payment per ha conservation with actual payments it was noticed that there is a considerable difference among counties; while actual payments for some counties are quite close to optimal payments under any of the uncertainty conditions they can deviate largely for some other counties.