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Resilient Provision of Ecosystem Services from Agricultural Landscapes: Trade-offs Involving Means and Variances of Water Quality Improvements

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  • Sergey S. Rabotyagov
  • Adriana M. Valcu-Lisman
  • Catherine L. Kling

Abstract

We assess the trade-offs and synergies involved in reducing agriculture-generated nutrient loads with different levels of resilience. We optimize the selection of least-cost patterns of agricultural conservation practices for both the expected performance of the conservation actions and its variance. Securing nutrient loads with a higher level of resilience is costly, with marginal costs of resilience generally declining with lower loads. We find that the main trade-off dimension is between cost of conservation investments and ecosystem service objectives, as opposed to pronounced mean-variance or between-nutrient objectives trade-offs. We find relative synergies in agricultural conservation investments aimed at nutrient reductions.

Suggested Citation

  • Sergey S. Rabotyagov & Adriana M. Valcu-Lisman & Catherine L. Kling, 2016. "Resilient Provision of Ecosystem Services from Agricultural Landscapes: Trade-offs Involving Means and Variances of Water Quality Improvements," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 98(5), pages 1295-1313.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:ajagec:v:98:y:2016:i:5:p:1295-1313.
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    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/ajae/aaw068
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Agricultural conservation practices; agricultural nonpoint-source pollution; ecosystem services trade-offs; multiobjective optimization; evolutionary algorithms; safety first; resilience;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • Q25 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Renewable Resources and Conservation - - - Water
    • C63 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Mathematical Methods; Programming Models; Mathematical and Simulation Modeling - - - Computational Techniques

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