How much is public land worth in Ohio?

by Brent Sohngen (sohngen.1@osu.edu)

Well, it’s spring again and flowers are starting to show. My favorite is the snow trillium. Hard to find, but worth the walk. It’s not the state flower of Ohio, but it should be. It’s a great time to get outside and enjoy the woods.  Ohio has some great outdoor opportunities waiting for all of us.

Remember, as you hike in a public park owned by your community or the state, that land is worth a lot to Ohioans. We estimate that recreational value for parkland in Ohio ranges from $8000 to $10,000 per acre on many state parks and other recreational areas in rural settings to $40,000 to $60,000 per acre in suburban settings near Ohio’s metropolitan areas. If local park districts can find nice parcels of land for this price or less, they will do well by their constituents to buy that land and make it available for public use!

Most land in the state is privately owned, leaving a modest number of publicly owned acres for recreation. Public land that is available, gets used heavily. The per acre values calculated above are based on studies that examine the trips people take to parks, their activities, and the price they paid to make the trip.

Based on studies conducted in Ohio (see Natural Land Study and Little Miami River Study), we estimate that trips to local parks are worth $12-$20 per trip, while trips further away to state recreational areas, like state parks or wildlife areas, are worth $25-$35 per trip. State parks and wildlife areas generate more value because they have unique features (e.g., Old Man’s Cave), longer trails, or perhaps fewer people. They also are further away for the people who use them, and thus are more pricey to visit.

The most important reason for cities to maintain parks and outdoor recreation sites is for the benefit of local citizens. But community leaders need not worry that parkland is a drag on the local economy. In fact, the opposite is true. We have estimated that all this outdoor recreation contributes 1% to 2% to Ohio’s economy. With Gross State Product of $822 billion in Ohio in 2022, recreation contributed an estimated $12 billion in economic activity.

It is difficult to allocate this $12 billion to specific places.  Ohioans take about 171 million outdoor recreational trips a year (for hiking, biking, camping, fishing, boating, etc.), implying that each trip contributes $72 to local economic activity. This sounds like a lot, especially for trips to walk the dog in a local park. Those types of trips obviously do not contribute this kind remuneration to local businesses, but boating, fishing, biking, and camping trips, especially those that involve some driving, can easily contribute far more than $72 to local economic activity.

One of the great things about outdoor activity is getting away from home and finding some part of nature that you really enjoy. For folks worried about the environment, this creates a bit of a dilemma because we emit carbon dioxide into the atmosphere when visiting far-off outdoor spaces. Each $1000 of gross state product in Ohio produce 0.255 tons of CO2 emissions, meaning the $12 billion in outdoor recreational expenditures produces 3.1 million tons of CO2 emissions. It’s not a huge amount on a per trip basis – about 0.018 tons per trip – but all that recreation adds up to great fun with lots of carbon emissions.

I’m not trying to splash water on the good vibes of some outdoor recreation, so I have a solution for this problem – carbon offsets. I highly recommend that if you feel bad about the carbon emissions from your outdoor recreation, you consider buying offsets, or donating to organizations that do land conservation in forests, like The Nature Conservancy or a local land trust.

In recent years, forests in Ohio have removed about 5.5 million tons of CO₂ each year from the atmosphere (see: https://www.fs.usda.gov/rds/archive/catalog/RDS-2023-0020). Unfortunately, this sink has been declining as forests have aged in Ohio. Carbon offset markets could provide the financing to reverse this decline, but only if businesses and people like you and me invest in them.

Some people do not like carbon offsets, for all kinds of reasons. For instance, one concern often raised is that buying an offset lets someone out of using renewable energy themselves. But look at the facts here in Ohio.  Our electricity in 2021 was composed of only 3.5 % renewable energy (it would be greater if I included nuclear), so not many of us are going to be driving our electric cars, if we have them, on renewable energy yet. However, you can offset your emissions today, so why not use that option now?

Others worry that offsets are not real, or that they will be emitted someday through forest harvesting or worse, forest fires. The trees, of course, would beg to differ if they could. They’re real! Joking aside, the science of offsetting is strong. We already know that trees are removing CO₂ from the atmosphere at a rapid pace and storing it in ecosystems.

We also know that in the United States, these ecosystems are stable. Sure, fires happen, but those are mostly in the western US. Fires are harmful to human health, but it turns out they are not such a big emission source, because most of the forest carbon in the US is in the eastern US, not the western US where most fires happen. And not all of the wood in a forest fire actually burns, anyways. After a fire, lots of dead stuff is left on site, decomposing slowly over time as new trees grow back. Charred wood decomposes really slowly. In fact, charred wood is so stable, some people want to create it just to sprinkle on the landscape as a method of keeping it out of the atmosphere.

So, if you are willing to invest in carbon offsets because they are available now, while renewable electricity for your drive to the woods is not, the science says go ahead and buy the offset and feel good about your trip.

Life always seems busy, but please take some time to get outside this spring and enjoy some of Ohio’s incredible, and highly valuable, public outdoor space.  You will do yourself and our economy some good! If you want to minimize your carbon emissions, carbon offsets are a great way to do it.  At current prices, they will cost you the equivalent of $0.05 to $0.20 per gallon of gasoline.

If you want to learn more about sustainability in Ohio, please join the department of Agricultural, Environmental, and Development Economics at the 4-H Center on the OSU campus on May 8^th for our program titled “Ohio Pathways to Sustainability”  You can find more information about this program at the following link: go.osu.edu/ohio-pathways.