Topic 13.5: The Economic Geography of Landscape Design

To the extent that land use decisions are made on financial grounds, the costs of different land use practices need to be considered in their spatial allocation. Transportation costs often figure prominently in determining the suitability of a land use practice. For example, it makes little sense to assign a remote parcel of land for enrichment planting given the costs of carrying seedlings to planting sites and the substantial number of times each seedling needs to be tended before it can be allowed to grow. Instead, remote sites might be reserved for low intensity selective harvests with a minimum of associated silvicultural treatments (e.g., liberation of future crop trees), or set aside for protection.