ABSTRACT
The consequences of elevated carbon dioxide and climate change on forest systems and the role that economics could play in timber harvest and vegetation change have not been addressed together. The spatial scale of the forest sector is both national and regional and requires a careful pairing with appropriately-scaled ecological models. The link between the ecological model and the timber inventory model describes the effect of climate change and elevated carbon dioxide on timber productivity. Rather than use a single GCM scenario to examine this effect, we chose to develop an envelope of productivity responses to help define maximum and minimum responses within the context of the linked models. The Timber Assessment Market Model (TAMM) is designed to provide long-term projections of price, consumption and production trends and to simulate alternative forest policies and programmes in the US forest sector. The solution of TAMM represents a spatial equilibrium in the markets modelled for each year of the projection period.
