Greg L. Slaney¹,David A. MacLean, Van Lantz, Kevin B. Porter
¹ Faculty of Forestry and Environmental Management, University of New Brunswick,

SERG Project #2006/06
Year of Project: 2006
Report Received: 2007

To evaluate the cost effectiveness of pest management investments we expanded the Spruce Budworm Decision Support System (SBW DSS) to include protection costs, wood product value, and carbon (C) sequestration potential. The expanded SBW DSS allows pest managers to choose among a number of protection priority objectives, including minimizing protection program costs per cubic meter volume protected, per dollar of wood product value protected, or per ton of carbon (C) protected. In our applied analysis of New Brunswick’s Crown Timber License 1, we selected four protection scenarios, all designed to limit defoliation to 40% of current year foliage per year, but with different protection frequency scenarios: (i) very aggressive (protecting in every year of the outbreak), (ii) aggressive (protecting the peak 3 years of outbreak), (iii) semi aggressive (protecting every second year of outbreak), and (iv) do-nothing (normal outbreak with no protection). These protection frequency scenarios were combined with four protection size scenarios: 10,000ha, 25,000ha, 100,000ha, and 150,000 ha protection programs. The aggressive protection scenario under a 10,000ha protection program was the most cost effective protection option for each protection priority objective. This scenario combination resulted in an average volume protection cost of $2.55 /m3, an average C protection cost of $2.66 /ton C, or an average wood product protection cost of $0.10 /$ wood value.