Objective  As a kind of alien invasive organism, the spread of pine wilt disease has had a great impact on China’s forestry production and ecological environment, causing serious economic losses. Carrying out economic loss assessment of pine wood nematode disease not only provides an important basis for formulating disaster prevention and control programs and evaluating disaster control effects, but also scientifically guids various areas to effectively prevent and control pine wilt disease, which is conducive to improving the level of forest management.

  Method  Through a combination of innovations, this study constructed a set of practical evaluation index system for economic loss of pine wilt disease, and based on the theory of market economics and ecosystem service value evaluation, comprehensive application of direct market method. The alternative market method and the dynamic equivalent factor method were used to quantitatively assess the economic losses of pine wilt disease in mainland China on the provincial scale in 2017. The assessment results included direct economic losses and indirect economic losses.

  Result  The evaluation results showed that the total area of pine wilt disease in mainland China reached 85 524 ha in 2017, resulting in economic losses of about 19.5 billion CNY, including direct economic losses of 3.5 billion CNY and indirect economic losses of 16 billion CNY. The East China region was the hardest hit area of pine wilt disease, with a total disaster area of 43 883 ha, resulting in economic losses of 10.1 billion CNY, accounting for 52% of the national economic loss of pine wilt disease, of which direct economic losses accounted for 9%, indirect economic losses accounted for 43%. In 2017, the province with the most serious pine wood nematode disaster was Zhejiang Province. The province’s economic losses totaled 4.1 billion CNY, direct economic losses were 700 million CNY, and indirect economic losses were 3.4 billion CNY. The economic loss of pine wood nematode disease had shown that indirect economic losses were far greater than direct economic losses in all regions, compared with an average of 4.6 times. The direct economic losses included the loss of forest material resources, the cost of prevention and control, and the loss of invalid forestry costs. The direct economic losses per unit area were 21 800, 1 783 and 17 302 CNY/ha, respectively. Indirect economic losses included adjustment of service value loss, loss of support service value and loss of cultural service value. The average indirect economic losses per unit area were 77 981, 7 057 and 7 741 CNY/ha, respectively.

  Conclusion  In 2017, pine wilt disease mainly occurred in the southern part of China, East China and South China were the hardest hit areas, and Zhejiang Province and Guangdong Province respectively represented the provincial-level disaster space gathering center. The economic losses caused by pine wood nematode disasters are mainly indirect economic losses.