Modeling Economic and Behavioral Drivers of Agricultural Conservation Actions in the Minnesota River Basin and Coupled Human-Natural Policy Scenarios
Abstract
The U.S. State of Minnesota is operating under the recent call made by its governor to improve water quality by 25 percent by the year 2025. Many watersheds in the state have identified more aggressive desired water quality improvements. Many previous analyses have concluded that actions of individual landowners are key to reaching these targets, and most such actions will need to be undertaken on a voluntary basis, often requiring monetary and/or technical assistance. Identifying conservation actions on agricultural lands which are most acceptable to private landowners and, if implemented, can attain the desired water quality or other environmental targets is an important question regionally while being conceptually applicable to many managed landscapes. Acceptability of different conservation actions is likely to be related to the salience of the environmental problems such conservation actions try to address, and to the overall levels of environmental concern on the part of the landowners. To this end, we conducted a mixed mode stated preference survey of crop producers in the Minnesota River Basin where we aim to a) elucidate the factors influencing the acceptability of several agricultural conservation practices and b) estimate the magnitude of monetary incentives which are needed to induce the adoption of conservation practices. Specifically, in terms of environmental areas of concern, we asked about the stated importance of sediment and nutrient reduction goals, as well as the importance of scenic quality, the state of aquatic habitat, and aquatic recreation. With respect to conservation actions, we asked about the willingness to restore wetlands, plant cover crops, and adopt a formal nutrient management plan. Landowner preferences were elicited using a binary discrete choice experiment, with particular attention paid to incentive compatibility and perceived consequentiality of the survey. We couple landowner behavior results with an ecohydrologic model of the Minnesota River Basin which has been modified to better account for in-channel nutrient dynamics and to incorporate watershed-specific flow-sediment relationships. Several conservation policy scenarios, selected to be sufficient to reach the "25 by 25" goal, are presented.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2018
- Bibcode:
- 2018AGUFM.H54G..02R
- Keywords:
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- 0414 Biogeochemical cycles;
- processes;
- and modeling;
- BIOGEOSCIENCESDE: 0496 Water quality;
- BIOGEOSCIENCESDE: 1879 Watershed;
- HYDROLOGYDE: 1880 Water management;
- HYDROLOGY