Nutrient retention return on investment in private forest conservation: the case of the Classified Forest and Wildlands Program in Indiana

Yangyang Wang, Shady Atallah and Guofan Shao

No 236154, 2016 Annual Meeting, July 31-August 2, Boston, Massachusetts from Agricultural and Applied Economics Association

Abstract: This paper presents a spatially explicit analysis of the nutrient retention ecosystem service responses to changes in forest management in the White River Basin (WRB), Indiana. We use a modified version of the Integrated Valuation of Environmental Services and Tradeoffs (InVEST) model and ArcGIS to simulate and value the magnitude of nutrient retention service, assess the prediction power of the InVEST water yield and nutrient retention model, estimate changes in the quantity and value of nutrient retention service with hypothetical increases in enrollment in a forest conservation program, the Classified Forest and Wildlands (CFW) Program, and rank candidate scenarios using a conservation return on investment (ROI) measure. The results suggest that the benefits from a single ecosystem service of nutrient retention can exceed the cost of the tax deductions for both forest conservation scenarios considered but not for the current CFW enrollment. In particular, expanding the CFW program in contaminated sub-watershed yields a higher ROI than expanding the CFW program along river forks. Consequently, substantial savings can be achieved by applying the ROI analysis to guide conservation policies, compared to prioritization merely on the quantity measures of nutrient retention service or compared to program expansion that is not spatially targeted.

Keywords: Environmental Economics and Policy; Financial Economics; Land Economics/Use; Resource/Energy Economics and Policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 36
Date: 2016
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:aaea16:236154

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.236154

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