ncx-gitbot
commented
1 year ago NCX response: Many commenters raised questions about the assumptions within the baseline model regarding the relationship between property size (< 355 acres, >10000 acres) and acreage likely to be harvested in a given year. We have clarified the assumptions and framework of the baseline modeling process that specify this relationship.
Commenter Organization: The Nature Conservancy
Commenter: Ethan Belair
2021 Deferred Harvest Methodology Section: 11.4
Comment: The implementation of a property size dependent adjustment to harvest risk makes sense, but the method applied here does not. While the authors attempt to make a logical connection between data points, I do think this logic holds. For small landowners, they are likely overestimating the proportion of a property that would reasonably be harvested in any given year. A landowner with 200 acres is unlikely to harvest all of that land in any one given year, yet the Property-Level Harvest Rsik Adjustment assumes that nearly 100% of that landowner's carbon is "at risk". Furthermore, for large landowners, the assumption that 1) a logging firm is only able to harvest 355 ac/year, and that 2) a landowner is working with a single logging firm, are both spurious. A landowner who controls 10,000 acres could reasonably harvest more than 600 acres in a year, were they motivated to do so and hired more than a single logging firm (or a firm with more than 1 crew). While I do not have hard evidence or data to these effects, I think most foresters would have an intuitive sense that the risk adjustment here applied is likely misguided.
Proposed Change: No Proposed Change