Environmental impacts of renting rangelands: integrating remote sensing and household surveys at the parcel level

Land rental markets are growing worldwide and facilitate efficient utilization of land. However, the short duration of occupancy and limited property rights mean that rental contracts may discourage longer-term sustainable land management. Direct investigation into the relationship between land tenu...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Environmental research letters 2023-07, Vol.18 (7), p.74005
Main Authors: Lu, Luci, Li, Ping, Kalacska, Margaret, Robinson, Brian E
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Empirical analysis
Environmental impact
Environmental management
Environmental policy
Land management
Land tenure
Land use planning
Mathematical models
participatory mapping
payment for ecosystem services
Property rights
rangeland
Rangelands
Remote sensing
rental
Resource management
Statistical models
Surveys
Sustainability management
Workflow
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Land rental markets are growing worldwide and facilitate efficient utilization of land. However, the short duration of occupancy and limited property rights mean that rental contracts may discourage longer-term sustainable land management. Direct investigation into the relationship between land tenure and ecological outcomes has been hampered by scale-appropriate data on land tenure, resource management, and land outcomes. In this paper, we address these issues with a study design that combines participatory mapping, household surveys, and remote sensing. We analyzed these data in a multilevel statistical model, controlling for environmental and land management influences. Our results show that rented land parcels are associated with worse rangeland outcomes compared to privately held parcels. This study contributes to the literature by documenting important empirical effects of rental markets and presenting a replicable workflow for integrating earth observations and micro-level survey data, which can be adopted by researchers and practitioners in regions where land registry data is unavailable or inaccessible. The results have important implications for incentive and compensatory-based environmental policy.
ISSN:1748-9326
1748-9326
DOI:10.1088/1748-9326/acd8d9