A Coupled Spatial Economic-Hydrological Model of Cropland Transitions and Environmental Impacts

Wendong Zhang (), Chen Na, Elena Irwin, Jay F. Martin, Seyoum Y. Gebremariam and Marie Gildow

No 170599, 2014 Annual Meeting, July 27-29, 2014, Minneapolis, Minnesota from Agricultural and Applied Economics Association

Abstract: Agricultural land use change has long been of a considerable interest to agricultural and resource economists. With a focus on western Lake Erie basin, the objective of this paper is to identify the determinants of recent land use transitions from non-agricultural land into cropland and investigating the environmental impacts of these recent changes in terms of agricultural nutrient runoffs. Specifically, we analyze the transitions from non-crop rural land into different crop rotation patterns using a mixed logit model with error components that relaxes the IIA assumption. We then investigate the environmental effects of these changes using an existing watershed hydrological model – Soil Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) by translating the land use changes into changes in nutrient runoff into Lake Erie, focusing particularly on dissolved phosphorus.By analyzing the operators’ field-level decisions of transitioning non-cropland into crop production and its environmental impacts, our model provides useful insights into recent trends of expanding agricultural production. This work also contributes to the literature on coupled economic-ecological models by offering the first SWAT application on land use transitions into and out of agriculture.

Keywords: Agricultural and Food Policy; Environmental Economics and Policy; Farm Management; Land Economics/Use (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-05-28
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr and nep-env
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:aaea14:170599

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.170599

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