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Browsing by Author "Suter, Jordan F., advisor"

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    Essays on natural disturbances and the provision of ecosystem services: monetizing impacts, assessing management tradeoffs, and measuring vulnerability
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2019) Elmer, Matthew Joseph, author; Kling, Robert W., advisor; Suter, Jordan F., advisor; Weiler, Stephan A., committee member; Loomis, John B., committee member
    This dissertation evaluates the effect of natural disturbances on the provision of ecosystem services. The first chapter examines whether small and frequent wildfires affect drinking water prices, finding both short-run and long-run effects on downstream surface water resources and subsequent prices. The results indicate that water system variable cost rises immediately following a wildfire, encouraging capital investment to reduce variable cost and resulting in a significant effect of wildfire on fixed cost in the long run. The second chapter examines how increased Forest Service spending on fire management has affected non-fire management. The results indicate that spending on fire has increased in western regions, with spending cuts across non-fire and fire programs, and large impacts on eastern regions. In many cases it is a combination of direct and indirect effects that contribute to spending cuts in non-fire programs, and many programs experience additional cuts not associated with fire. The third chapter explores climate-induced changes in rangeland grazing services on National Forest land in the Intermountain West, measuring vulnerability based on environmental, economic, and social factors. Grazing on National Forest land is found to contribute to local economic conditions but is also associated with adverse effects on rangeland vegetation and water when the forage appropriation rate is high. Overall, the drivers of vulnerability are heterogeneous across the region, suggesting that management decisions and adaptive efforts may be best served at the local level.
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    Three essays on energy inputs, technology, and conservation policy in irrigated agricultural production
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2019) Hrozencik, R., author; Suter, Jordan F., advisor; Manning, Dale T., advisor; Goemans, Christopher G., committee member; Bailey, Ryan T., committee member
    This dissertation explores the role of energy inputs, irrigation technology, and conservation policy in irrigated agricultural production. In the first chapter, I utilize empirical and simulation modeling to understand the impact of non-linear energy pricing on groundwater use decisions in the Republican River Basin of Colorado. The second chapter empirically investigates how peer effects and resource availability influence a producer's choice to adopt a resource-conserving irrigation technology using data from the Trifa Plain of Morocco. The third chapter develops a hydroeconomic model which pairs groundwater demand with a physical model of resource dynamics to quantify how a groundwater conservation policy implemented within a subsection of the Republican River Basin of Colorado creates resource and input market spillovers.
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    Three essays on the economics of land use and conservation
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2024) Shartaj, Mostafa, author; Suter, Jordan F., advisor; Manning, Dale T., committee member; Bayham, Jude, committee member; Jones, Kelly, committee member
    This dissertation consists of three chapters focused on the economics of land use and conservation. The first chapter investigates the differences in groundwater use among wells irrigating State Land Board (SLB) parcels and nearby private parcels. SLB parcels represent leased parcels with limited tenure length and uncertainty of renewal. In the chapter, we demonstrate that wells irrigating SLB lands pump substantially more groundwater compared to non-SLB wells. The second chapter makes use of a novel dataset of discount rates elicited from agricultural producers across the United States to explore how estimates of discount rates for can be utilized to improve the performance of agri-environmental programs. The final paper examines camping in US Forest Service (USFS) campgrounds during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using data on campground reservations made through recreation.gov, we illustrate how camping on USFS lands was impacted by infection rates, public health restrictions and proximity to metropolitan areas and National Parks (NPs). Imperfect property rights can lead to over-extraction of resources and provide disincentives to invest in conservation of the resource stock. In the first chapter, making use of a natural experiment, we explore the case of groundwater usage on State Land Board (SLB) parcels, relative to nearby private parcels. The SLB of Colorado leases out land to agricultural producers, with groundwater rights tied to the land leases. Leases by the SLB have tenure lengths of 10 years, where the leaseholder is allowed to renew their lease if they can match the highest bid for the next lease term. This generates uncertainty regarding access to future groundwater stocks. We contribute to the literature by demonstrating the causal impact of SLB designation on groundwater use. We show that wells irrigating SLB lands, on average, use 15 to 24 percent more groundwater compared to nearby private lands. Adoption of conservation practices in agriculture often requires upfront costs, while the private benefits are produced in the future. As such, farmers' time preferences can play an important role in adoption decisions. In the second chapter, using elicited discount rates of farmers from 26 US states, we explore the role of farmers' discount rates in cover crop adoption, program participation, and continuation of cover cropping after the contract period. The data reveal that mean observed discount rates are lower both for farmers that adopt cover cropping and for farmers that participate in conservation programs, compared to those who do not. This suggests that time preferences play a key role in conservation adoption decisions. The empirical results are followed by a simulation analysis, which utilizes the discount rate data to explore benefits of tailoring conservation contracts based on discount rates. The simulations point out that a small increase in upfront payments can substantially increase cover cropping during the contract period, but they do little to increase continuation of cover cropping after the contract period. The simulations also reveal that tailoring the contract length and annual payment, according to the discount rate information, can allow policy makers to target higher levels of continuation, which are unattainable under the 5-year status quo contract. In the extreme case where the program administrator can observe individual discount rates, it is possible to dramatically reduce the costs of increasing continual adoption by individually tailoring the contracts. During the COVID-19 pandemic, US public land managers faced the challenge of catering to large increases in camping demand, while maintaining social distancing guidelines. In the final chapter, we use multivariate linear regression to analyze weekly changes in reservations to US Forest Service (USFS) campgrounds between 2019 and 2020. Our sample includes 1,688 individual USFS campgrounds from across the contiguous US. The results illustrate the dramatic increases in camping on USFS land that occurred in the summer of 2020 and demonstrate that increases in local infection rates led to significant increases in camping nights reserved in the summer. The results also illustrate that the increase in camping nights reserved at USFS campgrounds was particularly dramatic for campgrounds located near large metropolitan areas and near National Parks that saw increases in overall recreational visits. These results point to the important role that public lands played during the pandemic and can help guide public land resource allocations for campground maintenance and operation.
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    Three essays on the use of spatial data to inform environmental and resource management
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2022) Sheng, Di, author; Suter, Jordan F., advisor; Manning, Dale T., committee member; Goemans, Christopher G., committee member; Bailey, Ryan T., committee member
    This dissertation consists of three essays that use of spatial data to inform trade-offs related to environmental and resource management. The first essay explores how a spatially targeted differentiated payment design can reduce the social cost of achieving a given level of ecosystem service (ES) provisions. Performance comparisons between uniform payments and differentiated payments for ecosystem services help to identify the context under which differentiated payments offer the largest advantage relative to a uniform payment. A mathematical programming model is developed to explore the performance of different payment schemes and to derive generalized lessons from simulations. Then generalized lessons are evaluated with two case studies related to water quality management. It is found that the simulations and case studies align with each other in terms of the total cost reductions, but they diverge in the payment rate choice due to the underlying distributional differences. The findings suggest that a higher payment rate for parcels that systematically provide higher levels of ES can reduce the social cost of providing the ES of interest, particularly for cases where the mean ES provision benefits across land types are different and ES provision targets are relatively low. In the second essay, I examine whether China's pilot carbon emission trading system (ETS) has the co-benefit of reducing local PM2.5 levels. Two ETS pilot provinces are selected to be the treated group, while the control group is constructed with institutional knowledge. Static and dynamic difference-in-differences designs are adopted and compared to reveal the ETS treatment effect. The spatial and temporal variation in the ETS pilot areas allows me to adopt a dynamic two-way fixed effects model to estimate heterogeneous treatment effects on the treated areas. I find that the ETS improves the local air quality in Hubei but not in Guangdong. A further analysis suggests that a sector-standards based allowance allocation mechanism can cause local air quality to deteriorate. The third essay revisits the groundwater resource value question in the Ogallala aquifer through estimation of an econometric model of agricultural land prices that includes fixed effects, with the repeated transactions from the ZTRAX data product. Saturated thickness is used to present the groundwater availability and the study includes irrigated parcels only. Heterogeneous responses in land values to groundwater stock changes are found across Colorado and Nebraska. The marginal value of groundwater stock is highest at low levels of groundwater availability, which implies that additional groundwater depletion in Colorado is more costly than depletion in Nebraska.