ECONOMIC EVALUATION OF WATERSHED MANAGEMENT OPTIONS IN THE IRRIGATED COTTON AREAS OF THE UPPER MURRAY-DARLING BASIN IN NEW SOUTH WALES, AUSTRALIA

The article combines economic and hydrologic modeling on the watershed level and proposes a method for determining optimal spatial location of irrigation enterprises and use of water by source and intensity of irrigation management. This combination of economic/technical investigation results with solution that explicitly accounts for deep-drainage as a source of environmental adversities. Alternative policies to achieve this solution are analyzed.Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

The Economics of Agricultural Land Use Dynamics in Coconut Plantations of Sri Lanka

In this study a spatially explicit economic analysis was employed to determine the land use change in a traditional coconut growing district of Sri Lanka. From a theoretical model of land use, an econometric framework was developed to incorporate spatial and individual effects that would affect the land use decision. Markovian transition probabilities derived from the econometric analysis and spatial analysis was used to predict the land use change over the next 30 years. The results revealed that the fragmentation and conversion of coconut lands to urban continue in the areas close to the urban centre and also with less productive lands. Spatial analysis provides further evidence of the positive trend of conversion of coconut lands to urban uses close to the urban areas.Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Use of Spatially Referenced Data in Agricultural Economics Research

Georeferenced data on biophysical and socio-economic attributes are increasingly being used for decisions regarding priorities of land uses. However, research on the methodological approaches to using spatially referenced biophysical digital data in agricultural and resource economics is limited. Whether this is due to a failure to recognise the full versatility of these data or to some genuine limitations imposed by the data is one of the questions this article addresses. We also review some recent developments in the field and point to research directions in the use of such data in agricultural and resource economics as well as the choice of empirical approaches, such as econometric or programming models, static or dynamic models, and stochastic or deterministic models

ECONOMIC EVALUATION OF WATERSHED MANAGEMENT OPTIONS IN THE IRRIGATED COTTON AREAS OF THE UPPER MURRAY-DARLING BASIN IN NEW SOUTH WALES, AUSTRALIA

The article combines economic and hydrologic modeling on the watershed level and proposes a method for determining optimal spatial location of irrigation enterprises and use of water by source and intensity of irrigation management. This combination of economic/technical investigation results with solution that explicitly accounts for deep-drainage as a source of environmental adversities. Alternative policies to achieve this solution are analyzed

The Economics of Agricultural Land Use Dynamics in Coconut Plantations of Sri Lanka

In this study a spatially explicit economic analysis was employed to determine the land use change in a traditional coconut growing district of Sri Lanka. From a theoretical model of land use, an econometric framework was developed to incorporate spatial and individual effects that would affect the land use decision. Markovian transition probabilities derived from the econometric analysis and spatial analysis was used to predict the land use change over the next 30 years. The results revealed that the fragmentation and conversion of coconut lands to urban continue in the areas close to the urban centre and also with less productive lands. Spatial analysis provides further evidence of the positive trend of conversion of coconut lands to urban uses close to the urban areas

Assessment of Spatial-Temporal Expansion of Built-up and Residential-Commercial Dwellings with Some Economic Implications: A Case Study in the Lower Hunter of Eastern Australia

Built-up areas have been expanding throughout the world. Monitoring and prediction of the build-up is not only important for the economic development but also acts as sentinels of environmental decline important for ecologically sustainable development of a region. The aim of this paper is to model the growth of built-up and residential-commercial dwellings over the recent past and thus predict the near future growth for a popular tourist destination of the Lower Hunter of New South Wales, Australia. The land use and land cover change analysis, based on classification of Landsat imageries from 1985 to 2005 at a 5-yearly interval, indicates that built-up areas increased steadily; it was 2.0% of the total landscape in 1985 but increased to 4.2% by the year 2005. If this trend continues, the built-up area will have grown to over 6.5% by 2025—which is equivalent to growth of over 325% from the 1985 base. In order to further evaluate the residential and commercial growth, orthorectified aerial photographs of nearby periods of 1985, 1995 and 2005 were utilized to manually delineate residential/commercial dwellings, and thereby dwelling densities were derived. The results indicate that the mean dwelling density has more than doubled within a decade

Analysis of twenty years of categorical land transitions in the Lower Hunter of New South Wales, Australia

Land use and land cover change (LUCC) studies are drawing increased attention due to their importance in ecosystem management. Post-classification change detection provides a from-to change matrix; however, traditional analysis of the change matrix is not sufficient to provide systematic signals of LUCC. This paper analyzes the details of the matrix to compute the quantity, allocation, and dominant signals of land use and land cover (LULC) transitions in a popular tourist destination, the Lower Hunter of New South Wales, Australia. We use classified maps that were derived from Landsat imageries of 1985 and 2005. We applied a change detection analysis based on an extended transition matrix of the two classified maps, and extracted systematic transitions. We then explored how changes are influenced by the resolution of the maps. The net quantity change less than 7% of the study area, while the total change is more than 28%, the latter due to considerable swap changes. Multiple-resolution analysis reveals that about half of the total change is attributable to spatial reallocation of the categories over distances less than 2.3 km. Vineyard has experienced substantial changes in terms of gross gains and gross losses, in spite of its small net change. The three transitions: Pasture/scrubland to Vineyard, Vineyard to Pasture/scrubland and Vineyard to Built-up are the systematic transitions in the landscape. The transition of Vineyard to Built-up around the centre of the study area and the expansion of Vineyard away from centre is associated with tourism, which is also extending into the new outer vineyards and wineries. This in-depth analysis has enabled us to quantify and to visualize the major signals of transitions of LULC categories in the study region. © 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved