A bibliographic database on economic analysis of natural forest disturbances

Abstract

The data presented here are related to the research paper entitled “Economic Analysis of Natural Forest Disturbances: A Century of Research” (Montagné-Huck and Brunette, 2018). Natural disturbances have always affected forest ecosystems, altering or disrupting the flows of goods (wood, non-timber products, etc.) and services (scenic and recreation values, leisure pursuits, clean water, regulation of floods, etc.) provided by forests to human societies. Economic analysis can help private or public decision-makers take forest policy decisions by understanding the causes and consequences of forest disturbances, as well as evaluating tradeoffs in alternative policy scenarios. In consequence, the economic literature about natural disturbances is very rich and diversified.This paper describes a bibliographic database gathering some 340 scientific papers related to the economic analysis of forest natural disturbances. Papers have been inventoried primarily thanks to searches on databases (JSTOR, ScienceDirect, Ingentaconnect and NRC Research Press) using specific keywords and the dataset have been completed by searching through literature-cited sections of papers. Relevant papers have been manually encoded into a database (Excel file) taking into consideration each type of hazard (storm, fire, snow, pests and diseases, etc.) and different economic approaches. Data cover papers published in English from 1916 to 2014.