Teaching Responsibilities

• FOR 4432: Forest Resource Policy
• Coming soon: Natural Resource Applications in Operations Research

Selected Research Activities

• Wildfire Risk.  This research explores how public land managers and private land owners manage wildfire risk.  On landscapes where there is a mix of public and private ownership, I examine the strategic interaction between landowners in their hazardous fuel management decisions.  In addition, I develop a modeling framework to identify the public land-manager’s minimum-cost wildfire suppression response to situations where there are many fires burning, which must be jointly managed.
• Biodiversity Conservation.  What is the best way to design a system of protected areas for species conservation?  The debate over the best design of a reserve network centers primarily around those who advocate for a single large reserve and those who advocate for several small reserves.  One argument in support of several small reserves is that if fire, disease, or pests wipe out one protected area, the species dependent on the area will not be lost entirely because other reserves exist.  The overarching goal of this research is to determine how the optimal reserve design depends on spatially correlated risks, such as fire, disease, and pests.
• Incentive-based Natural Resource Policy.  Market-based incentives are increasingly used to achieve environmental objectives.  Markets for ecosystem services, forest banking, forest certification, and cap-and-trade carbon trading schemes are just a few examples of these market-based programs.  In Virginia, there is a growing movement in support of the use of ecosystem service markets to slow deforestation rates in the state. This research examines current landowner incentives (and disincentives) for conservation and estimates the potential impact of ecosystem service markets on landowner decisions and deforestation rates.
• Strategic Landowner Interaction.  How does the interaction of multiple landowners affect individual decisions and collective outcomes on landscapes with fragmented ownership?  This research focuses on situations where the value of the individual landowner’s management decision depends on the decision made by the individual and decisions made by neighboring landowners.  Invasive species management decisions—where the risk of invasion is a function of measures taken by the individual landowner and neighboring landowners—is one example of this type of situation.  In this research, I use game theory and mathematical programming heuristics to identify equilibrium outcomes on landscapes with a large number of landowners and ownership units. 

Selected Publications

• Busby, Gwenlyn M. and Heidi J. Albers.  In Review.  Wildfire Risk Management on a Landscape with Public and Private Ownership: Who Pays for Protection?  Environmental Management.
• Stidham, Melanie A., Gwenlyn M. Busby, and K. Norman Johnson.  In Press.  The Role of Economic Emergency Situation Determinations in Expediting Fire Salvage.  Environmental Law Reporter.
• Busby, Gwenlyn M., Claire A. Montgomery, and Gregory S. Latta.  2007.  The Opportunity Cost of Forest Certification in Western Oregon.  Western Journal of Applied Forestry, 22(1): 55-60.
• Busby, Gwenlyn M.  2006.  Export Chip Prices as a Proxy for Nonsawtimber Prices in the Pacific Northwest.  USDA, Forest Service, PNW-RN-554.
• Isham, Jonathan, Michael Woolcock, Lant Pritchett, and Gwen Busby.  2005.  The Varieties of Resource Experience: Natural Resource Export Structures and the Political Economy of Economic Growth.  The World Bank Economic Review (19): 141-174.

Membership in Professional Organizations

• American Agricultural Economics Association.
• Association of Environmental and Resources Economists.
• Reviewer: Agricultural Economics, Western Journal of Applied Forestry.