Effect of Agricultural Commodity Prices on Species Abundance of US Grassland Birds

The expansion of row crop agriculture in the US is a major threat to grassland ecosystems and the biodiversity that they support. In this paper we developed an integrated econometric-ecological modeling framework that examines the impact of changing prices for agricultural commodities on grassland b...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Environmental & resource economics 2015-11, Vol.62 (3), p.549-565
Main Authors: Evans, Samuel G, Potts, Matthew D
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Abundance
Agricultural commodities
Agricultural land
Agriculture
Agronomy
Analysis
Animal populations
Biodiesel fuels
Biodiversity
Biofuels
Biological diversity
Birds
Commodities
Commodity prices
corn
cropland
Ecological models
econometric models
Econometrics
Economic Policy
Economics
Economics and Finance
Ecosystems
Endangered & extinct species
energy crops
Environmental Economics
Environmental impact
Environmental Law/Policy/Ecojustice
Environmental Management
Environmental science
Estimates
Ethanol
Grasslands
Land use
land use change
Mathematical models
Studies
United States
wild birds
Wildlife conservation
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:The expansion of row crop agriculture in the US is a major threat to grassland ecosystems and the biodiversity that they support. In this paper we developed an integrated econometric-ecological modeling framework that examines the impact of changing prices for agricultural commodities on grassland bird abundance in the Midwest United States. Our econometric model of land use change predicts changes in cropland acreage in response to land owner’s commodity price expectations. The ecological models predict changes in species abundance for twenty-two grassland birds in response to land use change. We demonstrate one application of our results by using parameter estimates from the models to simulate the effect of the 2006–2012 corn ethanol expansion on thirteen bird species of conservation concern. We found that a relatively inelastic total cropland acreage response to expected prices likely mitigated some of the ecological impact arising from increased demand for agricultural commodities. Furthermore, we found that impacts on species abundance are heterogeneous across different species and highly sensitive to model selection. Our findings emphasize the importance of using economically driven acreage expansion scenarios when estimating the environmental impacts of land use change.
ISSN:0924-6460
1573-1502
DOI:10.1007/s10640-014-9829-1