Graduate Thesis Or Dissertation
 

Determining optimal timber harvest and fuel treatment on a fire-threatened landscape using approximate dynamic programming

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https://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/concern/graduate_thesis_or_dissertations/1v53k2639

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  • Forest management in the face of fire risk is a challenging problem because fire spreads across a landscape and because its occurrence is unpredictable. Additionally, management must be adjusted over time as unpredictable fire events are realized. Land managers have some control over the vegetation conditions that facilitate fire spread, and they can engage in activity that reduces fire arrival probability and decreases the likelihood of damage. This management activity will have consequences for fire risk in multiple locations on a landscape over a long time-horizon. The first manuscript in this dissertation demonstrates a method for incorporating spatial information and interactions into a dynamic model for management decisions. Approximate dynamic programming is applied to determine the optimal timing and location of fuel treatments and timber harvests for a fire-threatened landscape. This method allows a value function and an optimal policy to be found for a problem with high dimension state and action spaces. Larger net present values can be achieved using policies that explicitly consider evolving spatial interactions created by fire spread, compared to policies that are optimal in a non-spatial or non-dynamic setting. The second manuscript explores the interaction of multiple landowners on a single landscape. Fuel conditions that allow fire to cross property boundaries creates externalities, and must be accounted for when making management decisions. In the second manuscript, the problem of determining optimal management is formulated as a dynamic game where each agent affects the fire risk for other agents on the landscape. Value functions and optimal policies that account for fire-spread externalities are determined for each agent. This method is applied to analyze the effect of ownership fragmentation on landowner welfare and ecological outcomes.The third manuscript explores policies designed to make landowners accountable for externalities generated by their management. Damage caused by spreading fires has prompted the creation of laws such as liability and negligence standards for landowners. Large damaging fires that resulted in expensive litigation have prompted changes to wildfire liability laws in several states. These regulations change the incentives that managers face. In this manuscript, the multi-agent framework developed in the second part of this dissertation is expanded and applied to analyze the effect of different types of liability regulations.
  • Keywords: spatial, liability, reinforcement learning, wildland fire, approximate dynamic programming, forestry, game theory, stochastic dynamic games, risk, ecological disturbance
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