Land Use: Forest Lands - Public Lands
Ecosystem Service: Aesthetic/Amenity-Recreation
Regional Value Estimate: $3,311 per acre per year
Confidence Level (in estimated value): Moderate-High

How was value determined:

1. The regional value for public forest lands aesthetic/amenity-recreation was transferred from six peer-reviewed studies valuing different types of forest amenities and recreation from various locations in the United States and Europe with similar forest types to those in our target policy area (Bergstrom and Cordell 1991; Boxall et al. 1996; Halstead et al. 1991; Prince and Ahmed 1988;Zawacki et al. 2000).
2. The study values were converted to an annual per acre figure utilizing marginal value based on annual attendance figures at an average sized forested park (at least 60% forested land use cover) in the policy region.
3. Deer hunting values were converted to an annual per acre figure utilizing Michigan deer harvest figures by county for 2005 (Frawley 2006) and added to the pheasant hunting per acre value; the total was then added to the combined aesthetic/amenity-recreation value for private forest lands,

Value estimate limitations:

1. The value of different park amenities or recreational opportunities varies with the availability of substitutes and local preferences. This was not fully taken into account.
2. Additionally, using average values for all parks within the region leads to valuation errors because aesthetic/amenity and recreation values will be affected differently depending on proximity to forest lands.
3. The marginal value takes into account that not all park acres have the same value in all circumstances. An additional acre is much more valuable to a small park than it is to a large park. We simply used an average sized park, which does not take this into account.
4. Deer hunting data are not recent (1984). Nonetheless, these data are comparable to more recent data if we assume that it takes 10 hunting days to achieve each deer kill.
5. We did not take into consideration all possible types of recreation that might occur on public forest lands (e.g., fall color viewing) because there was insufficient information from other studies that could be transferred to West Michigan for this ecosystem service and/or land use. As a result, our value estimate is biased downward.