Land Use Changes: Economic, Social, and Environmental Impacts

Land Economics/Use, Q24, Q28,

Predicting China’s Land-use Change and Soil Carbon Sequestration under Alternative Climate Change Scenarios

This paper examines and predicts the effects of climate change and climate extremes on China’s land use conversion and soil carbon sequestration under two alternative climate change scenarios. It intends to investigate the following three questions. 1) How did climate factors affect land-use conversion in China from 1988 to 2000 and what was the relative importance of these factors? 2) How would the predicted future climate change pattern affect land-use choice under alternative climate change scenarios? 3) How would the predicted future climate pattern change the spatial distribution of soil organic carbon in China? The study makes two contributions to the literature. First, it integrates climate change, land use conversion, and soil carbon sequestration into a whole model, which facilitates a comprehensive, systematic analysis. Second, it employs a unique dataset, consisting of high-quality Geographic Information System (GIS) data on climate, land use, and soil properties. To the best of our knowledge, no one has used such detailed Chinese data for economic research.Land-use change, soil carbon sequestration, climate change, Environmental Economics and Policy, Land Economics/Use,

Reducing Nitrogen Runoff from the Upper Mississippi River Basin to Control Hypoxia in the Gulf of Mexico: Easements or Taxes?

This paper integrates economic and physical models to estimate the social cost of reducing nitrogen loads from the Upper Mississippi River Basin to the Gulf of Mexico under three conservation easement policies and a fertilizer use tax. The economic models predict farmers' choice of crops and management practices at more than 44,000 Natural Resource Inventory sites in the basin. The physical model assesses the impact of land use changes on nitrate-N concentrations in the Mississippi River. Results suggest that the fertilizer-use tax is much more cost effective than the three easement policies. Incentive payments for conservation tillage are most cost effective among the three easement policies, but can reduce nitrate-N concentrations by only 37%. The potential for incentive payments for corn-soybean rotations is even more limited. Payments for cropland retirement can be used to achieve the largest reduction in nitrate-N concentrations, but are least cost effective among the four policies considered in this paper.Fertilizer-use taxes, conservation easements, hypoxia, land use changes, nitrate water pollution, nonpoint source pollution, SWAT, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy, Q24, Q25, Q28,

How Do Location Decisions of Firms and Households Affect Economic Development in Rural America?

This paper examines the causes of spatial inequalities in economic development across rural America. A theoretical model is developed to analyze interactions between location decisions of firms and households as they are affected by natural endowments, accumulated human and physical capital, and economic geography. Based on the theoretical analysis, an empirical model is specified to quantify the effect of these factors on key indicators of economic development across counties in the United States. Preliminary results suggest that households are willing to trade better amenities for lower income, and firms take advantage of this tradeoff by locating in areas with better climate and more recreational opportunities. In equilibrium, counties with better climate and more creational opportunities have lower income and more employment opportunities. Accumulated human and physical capital also significantly affect economic development across counties in the United States. Counties with more accumulated human and physical capital have higher income, more employment opportunities, and high development density. Remoteness has a negative effect on every measure of economic development indicator. It reduces income, employment, housing prices and total developed areas. Implications of the results for policy development to promote economic prosperity in rural America are discussed.Community/Rural/Urban Development,

A spatial analysis of land use change and water quality in Lake Biwa, Japan

Land Economics/Use, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

The Empirics of Environmental and Distributional Impacts of Conservation Targeting Strategies

This study compares the environmental and economic effects of alternative targeting strategies (benefit, cost, and benefit-cost ratio targeting) for reducing nitrate-N water pollution in the Des Moines Watershed in Iowa. The objective is achieved by applying an integrated modeling system to nitrate-N runoff from the Des Moines Watershed. Our integrated modeling system consists of an econometric model and a physically-based hydrologic balance simulation model. The econometric model estimates the opportunity cost of CRP participation is calculated at each parcel. The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) is then used to simulate the level of nitrate-N runoff at each NRI parcel in the watershed. Our results show that the benefit-cost targeting achieves the highest nitrate-N runoff reduction for a given budget. The cost targeting results in the largest amount of land out of production. This strategy, however, results in the smallest environmental benefits. The benefit targeting takes the smallest amount of resource out of production and results in highest output level. The percent differences in the amount of land retired and total nitrate-N runoff reduction among alternative targeting strategies tend to be larger when the conservation budget is smaller. Finally, benefit targeting and benefit-cost ratio targeting tend to result in similar environmental and economic outcomes. Differences in nitrate-N runoff and acres of land retired between these two strategies are shown to be quite small.Environmental Economics and Policy,

Variational approach to renormalized phonon in momentum-nonconserving nonlinear lattices

A previously proposed variational approach for momentum-conserving systems [J. Liu et.al., Phys. Rev. E 91, 042910 (2015)] is extended to systematically investigate general momentum-nonconserving nonlinear lattices. Two intrinsic identities characterizing optimal reference systems are revealed, which enables us to derive explicit expressions for optimal variational parameters. The resulting optimal harmonic reference systems provide information for the band gap as well as the dispersion of renormalized phonons in nonlinear lattices. As a demonstration, we consider the one-dimensional \phi^?4 lattice. By combining the transfer integral operator method, we show that the phonon band gap endows a simple power-law temperature dependence in the weak stochasticity regime where predicted dispersion is reliable by comparing with numerical results. In addition, an exact relation between ensemble averages of the \phi^?4 lattice in the whole temperature range is found, regardless of the existence of the strong stochasticity threshold.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figure