ncx-gitbot
commented
1 year ago NCX response: The business as usual model is a hierarchical statistical model that predicts one-year harvest risk and intensity based on FIA training data and a suite of covariates that include geographic, biological, economic, and sociological factors. Partial pooling across forest types ensures that the model is able to leverage the similarity and ubiquity of covariate relationships across the forests of the continental U.S. while still allowing for regionally specific differences. We also go through a post-prediction adjustment step that takes into account, for example, local constraints on harvesting.
Commenter Organization: Bluesource LLC
Commenter: Ben Parkhurst
2021 Deferred Harvest Methodology Section: No Section Indicated
Comment: Baseline Legal Restrictions
Proposed Change: The methodology doesn’t seem to adequately address legal restrictions in assessing the probability in the baseline that a given property would be harvested. Many small landowners may not understand the local laws and regulations (or may not be aware of conservation easements) as well as the permits required to harvest a given property. As a result, a landowner attestation is simply not sufficient to ensure that all legal restrictions have been accounted for in the baseline. There must be adequate an assessment and verification of the legal viability of baseline harvests, and we suggest that the methodology be bolstered to prevent properties from enrolling that could never be legally harvested, thereby overstating the claimed emissions reductions.