Many socioeconomic constraints exist for biomass removals from federal lands in the western U.S. We examine several issues of importance, including biomass supply chains and harvesting costs, innovative new uses for bioenergy products, and the policy framework in place to provide incentives for biomass use. Western states vary greatly in the extent and utilization of forest resources, the proportion of land under federal ownership, and community and stakeholder structure and dynamics. Our research—which focused on the socioeconomic factors associated with biomass removal, production, and use—identified several important trends. Long-term stewardship projects could play a role in influencing project economics while being conducive to private investment. State policies are likely to help guide the growth of biomass utilization for energy products. New markets and technologies, such as biofuels, for use in the aviation industry, torrefied wood, mobile pyrolysis, and wood coal cofiring could greatly change the landscape of biomass use. Social needs of residents in wildland urban interfaces will play an important role, especially in an era of megafires. All of these trends—including significant unknowns, like the volatile prices of fossil energy—are likely to affect the economics of biomass removal and use in western forests.

It has been posited that US national forest administration is undergoing a governance transition characterized by an increase in the involvement and influence of non-state actors. One example of this new form of national forest governance is the use of multi-stakeholder collaborative efforts for planning and implementing projects. This has raised normative and positive questions about the value and effectiveness of such efforts and how they compare with more traditional public involvement and planning processes. This study attempts to address the latter questions by analyzing project-level planning and implementation data while comparing collaborative and traditional projects on a suite of metrics related to pace, scale, complexity, and legal outcomes. We used administrative data from the USDA Forest Service to conduct a quantitative analysis of projects over a 14-year period. We found that collaboratively developed projects were larger and more complex than traditional projects and were associated with greater planning efficiency. This analysis responds to the need to systematically assess the impact of collaborative governance and contributes to existing theories of governance, organizational learning, and policy implementation.

Often missing or underdeveloped in wildland fire research is a clear sense of the link between contemporaneous political possibility and the desired ecological or management outcomes. We examine the disconnect between desired outcomes and what we call the “politically possible”. Politically possible policy solutions are those that recognize how compromise, stakeholder engagement, and the distribution of costs and benefits combine to structure political acceptability. Better attending to the politically possible in wildland fire-related research can, in turn, inform our understanding of the cause, effect, and the potential solutions to fire management challenges. We observe how a lack of awareness and attention to the politically possible can create divisions or barriers to realistic action.

Forest biomass used for heating, electricity, and biofuel production is a source of energy that could reduce the dependence on energy imports while reinvesting domestically. Using the appropriate scale and technology, the US state of Minnesota is poised for increased forest bioenergy production due to the large existing forest products industry. Forest bioenergy investments have been slow to materialize despite state and federal incentives, and this research aims to determine what barriers there are to bioenergy development from the perspective of supply-chain actors by applying theories of natural resource governance. Findings from interviews include the need to create an equitable playing field in terms of energy subsidies and integrate forest bioenergy production with bio-based markets, including traditional forest product markets. Additionally, interviews indicate poor coordination and shared responsibility among state agencies, industry associations, and nonprofit organizations, resulting in a fragmented policy system. Principles to guide enabling forest bioenergy development are identified and discussed in the context of the study findings.