The Economic Contribution of Snowmobiling in Maine

Snowmobiling has been a popular winter pastime in Maine for decades. During the 2018-2019 snowmobiling season, nearly 60,000 snowmobiles were registered in Maine by resident snowmobilers, and over 25,000 snowmobiles were registered by non-residents. Since the 1998 report An Economic Evaluation of Snowmobiling in Maine, overall registrations have increased, and registrations among non-residents have more than doubled. There has been no comprehensive evaluation of snowmobiling in Maine since the 1998 report completed by the University of Maine in collaboration with the Maine Snowmobile Association and State of Maine Snowmobile Program. In order to update the information on snowmobiling related expenditures, the sociodemographic characteristics of snowmobilers in Maine, and the opinions of Maine snowmobilers on snowmobiling tourism infrastructure and issues related to snowmobiling in Maine today, a new study was commissioned by the State of Maine Snowmobile Program and the Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry through the University of Maine’s School of Forest Resources. The results are contained in this report. The results conclude that snowmobiling generated $459 million in direct spending across many sectors during the 2018-2019 season. Accounting for indirect and induced economic activity, the contribution of snowmobiling to Maine’s economy was over$606 million. Snowmobiling generates a significant amount of spending during the winter in Maine, especially in the rural areas which benefit from snowmobiling activity. Snowmobile related spending also directly supports 2,279 jobs in the state of Maine and indirect and induced effects of the spending support an additional 1,060 jobs. Trip-related spending accounts for approximately $209.5 million or about 46$132 million in direct spendin

The effects of increased supply and emerging technologies in the forest products industry on rural communities in the northwest U.S.

The development of a market for currently non-merchantable forest material, such as harvest residues of tops and limbs of trees or small diameter trees, has been suggested as a possible win-win solution that could: (i) provide a financial incentive to help motivate treatments to reduce wildfire risk or restore forest stands; (ii) provide a material that can be harvested and potentially processed in rural communities reeling from changes in the forest products industry and policy environment; and (iii) capture more value from timber management activities. There is potential for such a market to aid rural communities through the incorporation of intermediate processing centers, depots, as demand locations in a market model of the forest products industry. Intermediate processing centers would gather woody biomass (harvest residues only) for either local use or for refining and shipping to a hypothetical bio-refinery producing jet fuel. Modeling the supply of this traditionally non-merchantable material with spatially explicit potential locations for emerging technologies in biomass processing allows for a realistic analysis of the feasibility of such a market to stimulate rural development. This dissertation models multiple scenarios for the utilization of harvest residues within the current forest products market in western Oregon. Scenarios considered include ones incorporating different establishment and operating costs of the depots and functions of the intermediate processing centers (dependent and independent depots) to model potential options on the demand side. On the supply side, scenarios included incorporation of harvest residues with and without federal lands as sources of biomass material and the inclusion of this material under increases in federal harvest activities, designed to simulate management closer to that outlined in the Northwest Forest Plan. Results suggest that with the modeled exogenous market prices for residuals, there is limited potential for a biomass market for harvest residues to aid some of the hardest-hit rural communities in western Oregon, and there is little improvement in the potential for the market to aid these places under scenarios of increased federal harvest

Impacts of Recent Mill Closures and Potential Biofuels Development on Maine’s Forest Products Industry

The economic contributions of a sector (i.e., employment, output, value added) are a measure of how money from that sector moves about a regional economy. Using 2014 estimates of economic contributions from the forest product industry in Maine, we estimate the 2016 contribution by considering the impacts from several recent mill closures (five pulp/paper, two bioelectric). The loss of these mills, particularly paper mills, reduces the economic contributions of the forest products industry relative to the state economy and distorts markets for low-value wood. We also explore a prospective opportunity to revive low-value wood markets by modeling the economic impacts from a hypothetical colocated biorefinery, where wood chips are turned into advanced fuels and chemical coproducts. The dollar value of economic impacts from such an investment are small relative to the total industry, but they may prove significant for some rural communities

The Economic Contribution of Logging and Trucking in Maine

Maine\u27s forest products industry has long been hailed as a backbone of the state\u27s economy. Multiple reports have been commissioned detailing the economic role of the sector (e.g. Bailey, 2019; Anderson III and Crandall, 2016; Gabe, 2013). It was recently estimated that the forest products industry contributed $7.7 billion in output to the state\u27s economy in 2016 (Bailey, 2019) An essential component of the industry is logging—which directly effects the availability and cost of delivered wood. In 2014, researchers set out to specifically highlight the logging industry\u27s economic role in Maine (Crandall, McCullock, Nick, Kizha, 2016). The work presented here aims to update and build upon that report

Employment growth, social capital, and spatial determinants of poverty change

This study models poverty changes across the United States between 1990 and 2000 as a function of spatial poverty variables (variables that attempt to capture the spatial effects of poverty and poverty changes), social capital, local employment growth, and demographic controls. Newly available decennial census data at the tract level is used to capture the benefits of a more homogeneous geographic aggregation. The spatial variables account for the effects of own poverty, poverty pockets, and dynamic spatial spillovers on poverty changes. Local economic and social context variables include measures for social capital and employment growth. Spatial econometric model formulations are compared with OLS, and results indicate that spillovers (a spatial lag variable) as well as a spatial error correction are significant. Overall, being in a poverty pocket (being surrounded by high poverty tracts) had a detrimental effect on tract outcomes, while employment growth and social capital had positive ones. Interaction terms are used in a second model to assess the effects of initial own poverty level on poverty change determinants. Significant spatial lag and spatial error correction parameters again indicate that the fates of neighboring tracts are tied together. Results from the interaction model show that there are significant differences in poverty determinants based on tract poverty rate at the beginning of the period. Having higher levels of minorities or poverty pocket location had a negative effect on poverty reduction in low poverty tracts, while college education rates had a positive effect. Poverty reductions in high poverty tracts were speeded by employment growth and social capital. The results suggest that anti-poverty policies, to be most effective, need to be sensitive to the effects of geography, and that employment growth is effective in reducing poverty, particularly in high poverty areas

Awaiting Takeoff: New Aviation Fuels from Farms and Forests

Many rural areas of the United States are struggling economically but have abundant natural resources that could be used as feedstocks for producing aviation fuel. Recent research concludes that these alternatives are technically viable but are not cost-competitive with conventional fuels. This generally holds, even when the societal costs and benefits of different fuel types are taken into account

TRICKLING DOWN: DOES LOCAL JOB GROWTH REDUCE POVERTY?

Was local job growth a significant determinant of poverty reduction between 1990 and 2000? This research takes advantage of newly available data and techniques to explore the job growth on tract-level poverty reduction. Spatial corrections to the model allow for more accurate identification of the significant determinants of poverty reduction across the United States. Results indicate that job growth is a highly significant predictor of poverty reduction, though its effect is modest. While spatial models didn't materially affect the regression coefficients, significant gains in model explanatory power were seen when using a spatial model as compared to OLS