Every year from 2000 to 2010, our planet lost native forests roughly the size of Costa Rica (FAO 2010). This rapid deforestation has dramatically changed the chemical composition of the world’s atmosphere, the level of biodiversity, and the presence of vegetation key to maintaining watershed...

Land use and land-use change can result in the emissions of greenhouse gases that cause climate change. Climate change also affects the productivity of land, which in turn leads to further land-use change. This paper explores the growing research on both topics. The land-use emission literature...

The effects of climate change on natural systems will be substantial, wide-spread, and likely irreversible. Warmer temperatures and changing precipitation patterns have already contributed to forest dieback and pushed some species towards extinction. Natural systems contribute to human welfare...

The use of payment for environmental services (PES) is not a new type of contract, but PES programs have become more in vogue because of the potential for sequestering carbon by paying to prevent deforestation and degradation of forestlands. We provide a framework utilizing transaction costs to...

This paper discusses both the opportunities for and the challenges associated with integrating economics and ecology in the study of ecosystem services. We distinguish between integration in positive versus normative analysis. There is rapid growth in positive research that combines the two...

Scientific evidence suggests that economic activity is threatening global biodiversity in ways that could severely degrade nature's flow of ecosystem services. Yet, there is relatively little work in economics that addresses biodiversity loss. Some economists have called for better integration...

Because habitat conversion is the greatest threat to species, this article focuses on economic incentives for private land users to protect habitat. Habitat protection policies that fail to account for private incentives often have unintended negative consequences. Private incentives for habitat...

Invasive species policy is an economic issue. People affect the spread of invasive species, and these invaders affect people. This review discusses bioeconomic modeling using endogenous risk theory to capture the idea of jointly determined ecological and economic systems. This perspective adds...

Crop biodiversity is very important for both the functioning of ecological systems and the generation of a vast array of ecosystem services. More agricultural biodiversity is associated with higher agriculture production and lower risk exposure. This article explores the recent contributions on...

Widespread global collapses of fisheries corroborate decades-old predictions by economists, made long before large-scale industrialization of the world's fisheries, that open access would have deleterious ecological and economic effects on fishery resources. Incentive-based alternatives...