Non-point source pollution, such as nutrient runoff to waterways from agricultural production, is an environmental problem that typically involves asymmetric information. Land use changes to reduce pollution incur opportunity costs that are privately known to landholders, but these changes provide environmental benefits that may be more accurately estimated by regulators. This paper reports a testbed laboratory experiment in which landholder/sellers in multi-round, sealed-offer auctions compete to obtain part of a fixed budget allocated by the regulator to subsidize pollution abatement.

Near-VAR, Energy, Bioenergy, Land use, Crude oil, Environmental Economics and Policy, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Food Security and Poverty, Land Economics/Use, C14, C22, C51, D58, Q11, Q13,

A model of land allocation at the aggregate watershed level was developed assuming profit/net benefit maximization under risk neutrality. The econometric land use model was analyzed as an equation by equation SURE model as all the independent variables were the same for both equations. In analyzing effect of land use change on water quality, we took year 2005 as our baseline and postulated three land use scenarios.

Land use change is a key requirement for improving rural incomes and making a significant reduction in poverty levels globally. Over 70% of the world’s poor are located in rural areas, with land use as a major source of subsistence. Improving the productivity of their land use systems is essential for increasing incomes and food security among them. Land use change is also a relatively low cost and rapidly implementable means of climate change mitigation.

Global harvested area of crops has expanded (+8%) in the period of 2004-2011. Nevertheless, some crops such as maize, sugarcane, and oilseeds expanded area more rapidly than the average rise. Although, some economists attribute this effect to biofuel production, economy also has encouraged expansion in cropland to satisfy food demand. This paper analyzes the impact that biofuel production and economic variables has had on harvested area for corn, sugar, and oilseeds.

Singaraja is the second largest city after Denpasar in Bali. The magnitude of the potential of the region both trade and services, agriculture and tourism in Buleleng Regency has given a very broad impact not only on the economy but also the use of land. Economic development in the city of Singaraja cause some effects such as population growth, an increasing number of facilities (social, economic, health, and others), as well as changes in land use. Changes in land use have a serious impact on the environment in the city of Singaraja.

Climate change, coupled with biofuels development and other factors may well be changing US land usage patterns. We use a spatial econometric approach to estimate the drivers of US land use transitions in recent years. We consider transitions between six major land uses: agricultural land, forest, grassland, water, urban, and other uses. To examine drivers, we use a two-step linearized, spatial, multinomial logit model and estimate land use transition probabilities.

With an estimated loss of up to 20 million ha of forest over the past decade, deforestation in Indonesia has come to the forefront of global environmental concerns. Indonesia is one of the most important areas of tropical forests worldwide. In addition to providing a multitude of benefits locally, including both products and services, these forests are also of global importance because of their biodiversity and the carbon they sequester.

This is the first paper that estimates the global land use change impact of growth of the bioenergy sector. Applying time-series analytical mechanisms to fuel, biofuel and agricultural commodity prices and production, we estimate the long-rung relationship between energy prices, bioenergy production and the global land use change. Our results suggest that rising energy prices and bioenergy production significantly contribute to the global land use change both through the direct and indirect land use change impact.

Agricultural land resources have been the central issue for the Chinese government in its attempts to secure food and agricultural sustainability. Yet strict land use control does not protect the agricultural land from erosion by urban expansion. Identifying the specific patterns and mechanisms of the agricultural land conversion, thus, is critical for land management and related decision making.

Land use change plays a key role in terrestrial systems and drives the process of ecological pattern change. It is important to investigate the process of land use change, predict land use patterns, and reveal the characteristics of land use dynamics. In this study, we adopted the Markov model and future land use (FLUS) model to predict the future land use conditions in Xi’an city. Furthermore, we investigated the characteristics of land use change from a novel perspective, i.e., via establishment of a complex network model.

Although renewable energy holds great promise in mitigating climate change, there are socioeconomic and ecological tradeoffs related to each form of renewable energy. Forest-related bioenergy is especially controversial, because tree plantations often replace land that could be used to grow food crops and can have negative impacts on biodiversity.