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Browsing by Author "Goldstein, Joshua, committee member"

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    Examining efficiency gains through combining revealed and stated preferences, and issues related to scope with contingent valuation
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2013) Gebben, David J., author; Loomis, John B., advisor; Seidl, Andrew, committee member; Graff, Gregory, committee member; Goldstein, Joshua, committee member
    An increase in the statistical efficiency for non-market valuation techniques is often desired in order to narrow the confidence intervals and provide better policy recommendations for resource managers. This is important to assist the managers in conducting benefit-cost analysis for the scare resources at their disposal. This dissertation examines the gains that come from combining revealed and stated preference data, exploring how estimation techniques can reduce the variance of a WTP amount. This first parts of this dissertation looks at why resource managers would be interested in methods of combining Revealed and Stated preference data and measurement of the gains. One chapter does this by combining DC CVM with an MNL travel cost study. The following chapter examines the role anchoring can play in DB CVM studies for an onsite user of a beach resource. The final part of this dissertation studies the issue of scope in CVM studies through a meta-analysis. This dissertation finds that, in organizing the collected survey data, there are low cost methods to increase the efficiency of estimators that provide a significant reduction in variance. This reduction is critical for the resource manager wanting to examine if the project or policy would pass a benefit cost test. It also finds that the key factors necessary to reflect scope require more research with CVM.
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    Integrative complexity and attitudes toward prescribed fire in northern Colorado and southern Wyoming
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2012) Czaja, Michael R., author; Cottrell, Stuart, advisor; Bright, Alan, advisor; Doe, William, committee member; Goldstein, Joshua, committee member
    This research examined whether the relationship between basic beliefs about wildland fire management and attitudes toward prescribed fire are moderated by the level of integrative complexity. Households in counties adjacent to three study areas in northern Colorado and southern Wyoming were the target of this social science research. The primary goal was to further validate a recently-developed measurement tool for integrative complexity and apply it to a new research scenario. The second goal was to identify respondents' level of complexity when they think about the issue of prescribed fire. Results suggest that integrative complexity moderated the relationship between basic beliefs and attitudes toward prescribed fire. Consistent with theory and previous studies, results suggested no relationship between integrative complexity and attitude direction. However, as expected, results suggested a significant relationship between integrative complexity and attitude extremity. A conceptual model was developed which incorporates assessing public and stakeholder integrative complexity into the development of forest management plans. Findings should assist forest managers with the development of collaboration, education, and outreach strategies.
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    Valuing economic benefits of water's ecosystem services with non-market valuation methods and regional input-output model
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2011) Ng, Kawa, author; Loomis, John, advisor; Goldstein, Joshua, committee member; Graff, Gregory, committee member; Seidl, Andrew, committee member
    Colorado has the highest trout angler participation rate in the United States, but the economic benefits of the state's anglers were last estimated more than two decades ago. Using survey data sampled in Colorado's stocked public reservoirs in 2009, Chapter one showed that trout anglers' net economic benefits were more than twice as much as non-trout anglers'. Values estimated from Travel Cost Method produced angler day consumer surpluses of US$191.60 and $61.68 for trout and non-trout anglers respectively. Values from Contingent Valuation Method are $196.48 (trout) and $73.84 (non-trout) for the mean consumer surplus, while the median are $164.53 (trout) and $56.78 (non-trout). Thus the relative values of fishing for trout versus other species are robust to non-market valuation methods, and the two valuation methods show convergent validity. Chapter two investigates the change in angler trips as a response to current season stocking level, in order to calculate the net economic benefit per fish stocked for selected hatcheries-stocked reservoirs in Colorado. Besides the unique objective to derive a marginal fish value for stocked trout in Colorado's reservoirs, this study also differs from existing studies in that it does not arbitrarily assume the proportion of stocked fish caught by anglers. As an alternative, this study utilized the relationships among catchable trout stocking level, angler catch rate, annual trips and valuation estimates to derive economic values of stocked fish: $0.38 for trout and $1.88 for non-trout. National forests contribute a substantial portion of water to the public supply in western states. In particular, units in the national forest system in Colorado are estimated to provide 68% of the water supply originating in Colorado in an average year. Chapter three used a customized value-added approach along with a state-wide input-output model to derive the marginal economic contributions to each economic sector in the state of Colorado. The approach used in this chapter differed from the traditionally applied method, in that it avoided over-estimating the value of water from implicitly assigning zero opportunity cost to all non-water inputs. Instead, the gross absorption coefficients for the water supply sector were used for adjusting the economic impacts. A method of calculating the economic contributions attributable Colorado's national forest water to each sector in the state economy was demonstrated. On an average year, summing across all sectors, water originating from Colorado's national forests contributed to a total of 4,738 jobs, $215,473,985 in labor income, and $264,485,290 in value-added for Colorado's economy.
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    Vulnerability of cold-water and cool-water fishes to climate change within an anthropogenic context using boosted regression trees, decision scaling, and ecosystem services
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2016) Harrison-Atlas, Dylan, author; Theobald, David, advisor; Arabi, Mazdak, committee member; Goldstein, Joshua, committee member; Poff, N. LeRoy, committee member
    Across the globe, environmental changes are occurring in ways that are profoundly important for freshwater ecosystems with implications for the occurrence of species. Typically, ecologists have sought to understand the distribution of freshwater species using natural environmental gradients. However, because rivers and streams embody a wide range of conditions due to human activity, adequately characterizing modern day drivers of species occurrence requires assessing both natural and anthropogenic influences within the context of global change. In recent decades, growing concerns over climate change have further contributed to the need to assess contemporary drivers of species occurrence. Despite this urgency, forecasting ecological responses to climate change remains a key conservation challenge. The aims of my research were to: a) investigate the drivers of western US riverine fish species occurrence within the context of global change; and b) project range-wide and site-level vulnerability of cold-water fish species to climate-induced changes in stream temperature and streamflow and to alternative land use trajectories. In my assessment of contemporary drivers of cold-water and cool-water fish species distribution, I found that primary determinants of fish occurrence included human influences that accounted for a substantial portion of modeled outcomes among species. Sedimentation and nutrient enrichment were the two primary disturbance pathways by which human activities influence aspects of stream condition that drive patterns of species occurrence. I also found that species had variable responses across anthropogenic gradients, suggesting that future efforts to characterize species-environment relations consider approaches that can capture nonlinear and threshold responses that occur along continuous gradients. In a second analysis, I evaluated the range-wide vulnerability of cold-water fish species to projected climate change in the western United States and assessed site-level vulnerability to varying degrees of exposure to climate change and additional environmental stressors. I focused on rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss sp.) and cutthroat trout (Oncorhynchus clarkii sp.) -- two wide-ranging salmonids of significant conservation and economic importance. Using high resolution data on future stream temperature and mean annual flow, I projected climate-induced changes in suitable habitat across the historic native ranges of both species within the western United States. Projected declines in suitable habitat for cutthroat trout were substantial by 2080 and exceeded those of rainbow trout. A sensitivity analysis revealed that stream temperature warming was the primary driver of habitat loss for both species. Both cutthroat trout and rainbow trout exhibited regional variability in habitat loss that was consistent with the magnitude of projected warming for summer stream temperature. Cutthroat trout distributions are expected to shift upwards along an elevational gradient with warming causing fragmentation of contiguous habitat that will likely expose them to additional environmental disturbances. I conducted a complementary set of analyses using a decision-scaling approach to explore site-level vulnerability as a function of feasible climate futures and human-influenced environmental factors that have previously been implicated as key components of suitable habitat for cutthroat and rainbow trout. I uncovered important insights into species vulnerability including differential sensitivity to stream temperature warming among cutthroat trout and rainbow trout as well as predominant influences of land use on species vulnerability independent of climate. Under a hypothetical climate adaptation scenario, I found that increased riparian cover shifted the distribution of vulnerability of cutthroat trout towards less frequent extirpations and that these benefits were achieved throughout feasible climate space. My findings suggest that augmentation of riparian vegetation is likely to be a robust climate adaptation strategy in an uncertain future. I conclude by offering two complementary approaches for advancing climate adaptation for freshwater systems in the face of uncertainty. I also conducted a systematic review of hydrologic ecosystem services (HES) studies published within the past decade, finding compelling evidence that variability in methods used to quantify HES reflects an orientation towards decision making. I discuss implications of my findings on climate change vulnerability and consider ways to integrate an ecosystem services approach into the management and conservation of freshwater fish.