Advancing forest disturbance economics – assessing the impacts on timberland returns requires consistent economic approaches

The discussion about economically optimal forest ecosystem management is almost as old as forest science. Continuous cover forestry renounces removing the tree canopy of forest ecosystems. In contrast, clear fell forestry suggests harvesting all trees at once to replace the crop trees with young trees. Assuming occurrence probabilities for stands of different ages, a study by Kärenlampi (10.1371/journal.pstr.0000146) introduced a forest portfolio perspective to analyse profitability (expected net revenues divided by forest value) and disturbance costs of continuous cover and clear fell forestry using data from another study (10.1007/s10640-022-00719-5). The reported results suggest that continuous cover forestry has a much lower economic performance and is economically more vulnerable to disturbance impacts than clear fell forestry, which differs from the results in the other study. In this work, we demonstrate that 1) the approach in Kärenlampi’s research does not allow for deriving accurate economic performance indicators, 2) the hypothesised forest states are incomparable, and 3) the reported continuous cover disturbance costs are poorly conceptualised due to inconsistent assumptions. His study’s proposition that a disturbance leads to a regime shift from continuous cover to clear fell forestry or that high maintenance costs are associated with it does not seem convincing. Managers can replant or adopt natural regeneration on forestland after disturbance to perpetuate continuous cover forestry long-term. Whilst Kärenlampi’s study highlights valuable discussion points, our analysis reaffirms the necessity for more conceptually consistent and realistic approaches and avoiding oversimplification, which will more effectively support the economic assessment of forest disturbances.