2002 Water Quality Inventory Stream Flow Types and Information Used to Determine the Dissolved Oxygen Criteria

This document shows how Waller Creek compares to other Texas water bodies in metrics used to determine dissolved oxygen.Waller Creek Working Grou

Scape Ore Swamp Nonpoint Source Assessment Project: Load Reduction Management Plan

The federal Clean Water Act (CWA) directs each state to review the quality of its waters every two years to determine if water quality standards are being met. A Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) is a written plan and analysis to determine the maximum pollutant load a waterbody can receive and still meet applicable water quality standards. This Load Reduction Management Plan details Fecal Coliform Bacteria for the impaired sections of Scape Ore Swamp: Station PD-355

Utah Resource Assessment

Located in the Rocky Mountain Region, Utah derives its name from the Native American Ute tribe and means “people of the mountains”. Utah is 84,900 square miles and is ranked the 11th largest state (in terms of square miles) in the US. As hosts of the 2002 Winter Olympic Games, Utah boasts the “greatest snow on earth” and is the home of 18 colorful National Parks and monuments. Utah\u27s peaks are, on average, the tallest in the country and create great contrasts that range from the snow covered peaks of the Uinta Range in the east, to the renowned natural and colorful rock formations of the deserts in the south. The geography is characterized throughout the 29 counties by three major eco-regions: Rocky Mountain, Basin and Range, and Colorado Plateau

Bear River Resource Conservation and Development Council Area Plan

This five-year Area Plan is the guiding document for the Bear River RC&D Council, Inc. It identifies needs and opportunities and goals and objectives which lead the RC&D Council in its work

Dynamic Resource Allocation in Conservation Planning

Consider the problem of protecting endangered species by selecting patches of land to be used for conservation purposes. Typically, the availability of patches changes over time, and recommendations must be made dynamically. This is a challenging prototypical example of a sequential optimization problem under uncertainty in computational sustainability. Existing techniques do not scale to problems of realistic size. In this paper, we develop an efficient algorithm for adaptively making recommendations for dynamic conservation planning, and prove that it obtains near-optimal performance. We further evaluate our approach on a detailed reserve design case study of conservation planning for three rare species in the Pacific Northwest of the United States

Does Resource Commercialization Induce Local Conservation? A Cautionary Tale From Southwestern Morocco

Ecotourism, bioprospecting and non-timber product marketing have been promoted recently as market-based instruments for environment protection, but without sound understanding of the resulting net conservation effects. We present evidence on the local conservation effects of recent argan oil commercialization in Morocco, which seems a promising case study in conservation through resource commercialization. Our empirical analysis shows, however, that resource commercialization is not creating strong net conservation incentives because assumptions implicit in the prevailing logic prove incorrect in this case. Generally, the experience of southwestern Morocco provides a cautionary tale about the assumed efficacy of conservation strategies founded on resource commercialization.Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

TIME INCONSISTENT RESOURCE CONSERVATION CONTRACTS

Are commonly observed resource conservation contracts efficient? In this paper we construct a model that embodies common characteristics of resource contracts. Using this model, we analyze a large class of real-world resource contracts and find them to be economically inefficient. This inefficiency stems from a time inconsistency inherent in these contracts. There are two possible ways to overcome this time inconsistency. The first is to employ a sufficiently large penalty for early termination of the contract. The second and possibly easier method is to offer an upward sloping conservation payment schedule so far overlooked by resource contracts. Under this payment schedule, the agent's ex-ante and ex-post contract choices coincide, social externalities are fully internalized, and the contractual outcome is economically efficient even in the absence of a penalty for early termination.Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Optimal Provision and Finance of Ecosystem Services: the Case of Watershed Conservation and Groundwater Management

Payments for ecosystem services should be informed by how both the providing-resource and the downstream resource are managed. We develop an integrated model that jointly optimizes conservation investment in a watershed that recharges a downstream aquifer and groundwater extraction from the aquifer. Volumetric user-fees to finance watershed investment induce inefficient water use, inasmuch as conservation projects actually lower the optimal price of groundwater. We propose a lump-sum conservation surcharge that preserves efficient incentives and fully finances conservation investment. Inasmuch as proper watershed management counteracts the negative effects of water scarcity, it also serves as adaptation to climate change. When recharge is declining, the excess burden of non-optimal watershed management increases.Renewable resources, dynamic optimization, groundwater allocation, watershed conservation, multiple resource stocks

Participation in Conservation Programs by Targeted Farmers: Beginning, Limited-Resource, and Socially Disadvantaged Operators' Enrollment Trends

Beginning, limited-resource, and socially disadvantaged farmers make up as much as 40 percent of all U.S. farms. Some Federal conservation programs contain provisions that encourage participation by such “targeted” farmers and the 2008 Farm Act furthered these efforts. This report compares the natural resource characteristics, resource issues, and conservation treatment costs on farms operated by targeted farmers with those of other participants in the largest U.S. working-lands and land retirement conservation programs. Some evidence shows that targeted farmers tend to operate more environmentally sensitive land than other farmers, have different conservation priorities, and receive different levels of payments. Data limitations preclude a definitive analysis of whether efforts to improve participation by targeted farmers hinders or enhances the conservation programs’ ability to deliver environmental benefits cost effectively. But the different conservation priorities among types of farmers suggest that if a significantly larger proportion of targeted farmers participates in these programs, the programs’ economic and environmental outcomes could change.Conservation programs, Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), Wetlands Reserve Program (WRP), beginning farmers, limited-resource producers, socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers, Environmental Economics and Policy, Farm Management, Financial Economics, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Food Security and Poverty, Land Economics/Use, Production Economics, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies,

Institutional and policy issues in the management of fisheries and coastal resources in Cambodia

Fishery management, Governments, Fishery policies, Resource conservation, Resource management, Cambodia,