mat-su

Residents in the Matanuska-Susitna and Kenai areas can assess their level of wildfire risk with new online maps developed by ISER research and associate professor Jen Schmidt as part of the Arctic Risks and Adaptations (AURA) project.

The Clear Fire in Interior Alaska has come within a half-mile of the Parks Highway, prompted evacuation orders for several communities, and is still just 22% contained. ISER associate professor Jen Schmidt has developed online maps residents can use to determine their level of wildfire risk. The maps also give insight to existing wildfires like the Clear Fire.

Ecosystem services is the term often used to describe goods and services we get from ecosystems—like salmon habitat or clean air. These things are valuable, but they aren’t usually bought or sold in the marketplace. Ecosystem service valuation assigns a dollar value to them. David Batker, executive director of Earth Economics, talks about the tools being used to identify and value ecosystem services. Such valuation can help policymakers as they make decisions about resource management and sustainable economic development.

Future population growth could be very expensive for residents of the Mat-Su Borough, if the cost of schools and other services increases faster than the revenues needed to pay for them. A big issue looming for the borough—and other local governments—is that state aid, which currently pays most of the bill for Alaska schools, is likely to decline as declining oil production reduces state revenues. The problem is particularly critical for the Mat-Su Borough, which is the fastest growing area in Alaska. A new analysis by Steve Colt, a professor of economics at ISER, assesses how six different land-use and population alternatives could affect the borough's finances through 2050. It focuses on the potential future costs of borough schools, because schools are by far the borough's biggest expense. The analysis was funded by The Nature Conservancy, the Bullitt Foundation, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Download the analysis, Fiscal Impacts of Alternative Land-Use Scenarios for the Mat-Su Borough (PDF, 1.5MB). If you have questions, get in touch with Steve Colt at sgcolt@uaa.alaska.edu.

Residents of the Mat-Su Borough north of Anchorage say they would be willing to pay substantial amounts for actions that help protect things that drew them to the area in the first place—including salmon streams, local farmland, and opportunities for recreation and hunting. That's the main finding of a recent survey ISER economist Tobias Schwörer conducted of borough residents. The survey asked respondents to choose among different hypothetical future land-use and development alternatives, with different costs assigned to each alternative. By their choices, the respondents put dollar values on actions that would help protect non-market resources, like healthy salmon runs and public easements for hiking or snowmachine trails. These dollar amounts are hypothetical—no one was actually asked to pay anything—but they are still important measures of what borough residents value and consider worth paying for. The survey was done for The Nature Conservancy, with funding from the Bullitt Foundation, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Read the 4-page summary of survey results, and see technical documentation of the survey and analysis of data. For more information, get in touch with Tobias Schwörer at tschwoerer@alaska.edu.