Application of GIS in the Environmental and Resource economics

Bibliography for GEO565

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Introduction

GIS applications have been extensively used in numerous studies; however the attention of the spatial aspects on the environmental and resource economics has recently been increased.

I think it would be very exciting time for environmental and natural resource economists who are developing approaches to address the spatial characteristics of both benefits and costs of resource management.

In addition, applying GIS to the spatial economics of environment and natural resource will provide in assisting economist to consider spatial complexities within their analyses.

From the following articles, I want to show how GIS can be applied to the spatial economics of environmental and natural resource, and also will introduce spatial economic methods and how those methods have been applied to various natural resources.

Objectives

1) Explore how GIS can be applied to the environmental and resource economics
2) Explore theoretical and empirical approaches to the spatial aspects of environmental and natural resource problems.

1. Bateman, I.J., Jones, A.P., Lovett, A.A., Lake, I.R., and B.H. Day. 2002. "Applying Geographical Information Systems (GIS) to Environmental and Resource Economics." Environmental and Resource Economics 22: 219-269.

This article is very useful if anyone has planning to study on application of GIS in environmental and resource economics. This comprehensive study provides an introductory discussion on general issues regarding the conceptual frameworks underpinning the use of GIS and the functionality that these systems can provide for applications within environmental economics.

In addition, it provides brief review of certain key paper which is applying GIS in this field, and introduces empirical studies applying spatial aspects such as hedonic property pricing studies, land use change, non-market valuation estimates, travel cost assessments of recreational values, Carbon Sequestration and its valuation and so on. Throughout review of the literature and empirical studies, the authors are emphasize the functionality provided by GIS can considerably enhance the incorporation of spatial issues within applied environmental and resource economics.

2. Anselin, L. and N. Lozano-Gracia. 2008. "Errors in variables and spatial effects in hedonic house price models of ambient air quality." Empirical Economics 34: 5-34.

This paper is one of the examples of empirical study about hedonic property pricing studies. It focuses on the some methodological issues associated with the estimation of an implicit price for clean air by including one or more pollution variables in a hedonic model of house prices. The authors take an explicit spatial econometric approach and include a spatially lagged dependent variable in the hedonic specification.

From Geographic Names Information System website they get a GIS data such as location for each park. And they also defined buffers of 0.25km around the highways and to create two indicator variables using ArcGIS and detailed highway map.

The main implication of this paper is the inclusion of the spatial lag has important consequences for the other parameters in the model that is ignoring spatial effects leads to unrealistic indication of precision which may be misleading in a decision making.

3. Bastian, C.T., McLeod, D.M., Germino, M.J., Reiners, W.A. and B.J. Blasko. 2002. "Environmental amenities and agricultural land values: a hedonic model using geographic information systems data." Ecological Economics 40(3): 337-349.

This paper is empirical study on how land character including geographical factor of land can impact on land price, especially on price per acre for a sample of Wyoming agricultural parcels.

Geographic information systems (GIS) data are used to measure recreational and scenic amenities associated with rural land. A hedonic price model is used to estimate the impact of amenity and agricultural production land characteristics on price per acre for a sample of Wyoming agricultural parcels with specified GIS measures.

The contribution of this study is to utilize estimated variables derived from GIS measures, the values of which are uniquely specific to individual land parcels. The GIS variables provide a means to quantify amenity attributes and the opportunity to include them in a hedonic price model.

The results pointed out the GIS data development provides more explicit variables and model specifications than qualitative representations such as ordinal ranking of land attribute levels or indicator variables signaling the presence of amenities. Estimation of hedonic models using such techniques stands to provide more accurate value estimates of environmental amenities.

4. Bhat, G. and J.C. Bergstrom. 1996. "Integration of Geographical Information Systems based spatial analysis in Recreation demand analysis." Faculty Series from University of Georgia, Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics. No. 96-26.

This paper is the case study on applying GIS and spatial analysis to recreational demand analysis in travel cost studies. It identifies different components for the development of an Object-Oriented GIS framework, and utilizes GIS to generate and analyze spatial data in recreational demand analysis.

The authors introduced different forms of analysis such as query, overlay, and transportation/routing analysis to integrate GIS and spatial analysis. An application of GIS to calculate journey distance and duration has been illustrated with a case study of camping activities in National Forest, North Carolina.

The main implication of this paper is the coefficients of travel cost and travel time in the GIS-distance based models are highly significant. Thus, a measurement approach that combines the accuracy of GIS approach with route itinerary information elicited from respondents would provide a significantly superior basis for travel cost studies.

5. Jeremy D.O. Eade and Dominic Moran. 1996. "Spatial Economic Valuation: Benefits Transfer using Geographical Information Systems." Journal of Environmental Management 48(2): 97-110.

The adoption of a spatial approach to economic valuation is desirable in terms of producing more accurate economic valuation figures, for use as a repository for benefits estimates, examining spatial sustainability, and facilitating the introduction of natural capital concepts into environmental decision-making processes.

This paper applied Geographical Information Systems (GIS) to illustrate the importance and potential of using GIS to adopt a spatial approach to economic valuation of the environment, and to demonstrate the utility for transferring site-specific benefit estimates. To do this, a benefits transfer exercise is performed to give a spatial representation to the total economic value of the Rio Bravo Conservation Area in north western Belize.

As a result, this paper produced economic value maps through the use of "spatial economic valuation" methodology. And also it shows us GIS is probably the most effective instrument for introducing a spatial dimension to economic valuation.

6. Niggol Seo, S. 2007. "A Geo-Spatial Macro-Economic Analysis of Climate Change in Latin America." Journal of Economics 1(1).

The main focus in this paper is to see whether climates play a significant role in a way of living and are likely to affect our lives in the future by changing climates.

To do this, this paper uses spatial distribution of geographical and macroeconomic variables to examine climate sensitivities of Latin American countries to overcome the obstacles posed by sector-by-sector analysis and market based approaches up to date. Based on Geographical Information System (GIS) and using climate prediction model, this paper examined relevant climate such as current temperature and precipitation as well as future temperature and precipitation variables using political boundaries, altitude and steepness of the geography, dominant soils and texture of the soils.

Then using macroeconomic variables in geospatial form such as GDP per capita, population density and animal distributions over the space, this paper examined geographic spatial analysis of macroeconomic activities as well as key statistics of non-market activities to understand the sensitivities and vulnerabilities from climate change.

7. Lewis, D.J., and A.J. Plantinga. 2007. "Policies for Habitat Fragmentation: Combining Econometrics with GIS-Based Landscape Simulations." Land Economics 83(2):109-127

This paper is analyzing the effects of incentive-based (market based) policies on habitat fragmentation, which is the spatial pattern of forests on landscapes dominated by private ownership. This paper also demonstrate the methodology with an application to the coastal plain of South Carolina, an area that is dominated by private landownership and where forest fragmentation poses risks to species of significant conservation value.

One of the most important contributions of this paper is applying GIS-Based Landscape Simulations combing with Econometric model. The GIS-based landscape simulation model relates the transition probabilities to actual landscapes so that future spatial patterns of land use can be predicted under baseline and policy scenarios, which can evaluate two types of subsidies similar to those used in practice. The main finding of this paper is that even a simple uniform policy that converts land at least cost may be more efficient than spatial policies, particularly if the goal is to influence more than one fragmentation metric.

8. Chomitz, Kenneth M. and David A. Gray. 1996. "Roads, Land Use, and deforestation: A Spatial Model Applied to Belize." World Bank Economic Review 10(3): 487-512.

This paper examines the tradeoff between promoting economic development and facilitating deforestation caused by rural roads construction in empirical study area of the southern Belize. The spatially explicit model of land use is mainly used to examine tradeoff between them by estimating probabilities of alternative land uses as a function of land characteristics and distance.

Geographic Information System (GIS) techniques are applied in this paper to get the land point sample data derived from digitally coded maps. Sampling was performed by placing a 1-kilometer rectangular grid over the country south of the Western Highway, yielding 11,712 sample points. To visualize the data-extraction process, imagine that they stacked the data layers (maps) of interest.

As a result, this paper shows that the impact of roads will be strongly modulated by other factors affecting rent; including soil quality and distance from markets, and thus it may be possible to locate roads so as to spur development while minimizing induced deforestation. I think the methodology described here can help planners assess the severity of environment-development trade-offs posed by road extension, apply to conservation planning, and gauge the effectiveness of habitat protection.

9. Mueller, D. and D.K. Munroe. 2005. "Tradeoffs between Rural Development Policies and Forest Protection: Spatially Explicit Modeling in the Central Highlands of Vietnam." Land Economics 81(3): 412-425.

This paper also one of the empirical studies on tradeoffs between economic development and protection of land, that is tradeoffs between intensification and protection of land in the Dak Lak province in the Central Highland of Vietnam.

Using the spatially explicit model, the authors show how the policy maker should determine where those changes are likely to occur, and also relative to the factors that influence spatial returns to land use. Land use is modeled using a reduced-form multinomial logit model and the spatially explicit simulations demonstrate possible land-use changes resulting from rural policy interventions.

Because of unavailability of spatially explicit data derived from GIS in Vietnam, they approximate village boundaries as the spatial base unit for the integration of socioeconomic with spatially explicit variables in order to delineate each village's sphere of influence on the landscape. The units of analysis are square pixels of 50 by 50 meters, i.e. 0.25 hectares.

Consequently, this paper suggests that forest protection strategies ought to be combined with ecological valuations that explicitly take into account the value of contiguous protection areas conserving precious biodiversity. This methodology facilitates a spatial assessment of land-use changes to allow policy makers the detection of local hot-spots, which possibly require additional conservation efforts.

10. Lewis, D.J., B.L. Barham, and K.S. Zimmerer. 2008. "Spatial Externalities in Agriculture: Empirical Analysis, Statistical Identification, and Policy Implications." World Development 36(10): 1813-1829.

This is one of the empirical studies based on “spatial externalities” of agriculture which is to illustrate how environmental and social spatial externalities can affect the return stream of farm income on adjoining individual parcels in either a positive or a negative fashion and hence exert important influences on farmers’ production and land-use choices.

GIS data in this paper is focusing at the scale of individual farm parcels. However, using spatial land-use data for this purpose requires strategies for identifying environmental and social externalities with the help of structural models, temporal data, and empirical landscape-based experiments.

One of the main contributions of this paper is to provide a spatially explicit microeconomic rationale and methodological approach, along with suggestions for research design, to complement and provide research strategies for better understanding the components of land-use change and the consequences for both development and environmental policies.

About Me

Taeyoung Kim
E-mail: kimtae@onid.orst.edu
Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics
Oregon State University

Links (GIS Korea)

• Korean Soil Information
• Korea National Geographic Information
• Korea National Environment Information Network System
• Korea MarineGIS Portal
• Korea Satellite Image Search & Display System

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