Most U.S. farmers prepare their soil for seeding and weed and pest control through tillage—plowing operations that disturb the soil. Tillage practices affect soil carbon, water pollution, and farmers’ energy and pesticide use, and therefore data on tillage can be valuable for understanding...

Producing biomass energy requires extensive land resources. In western Massachusetts, where almost 90 percent of former farmland is no longer in commercial use, we study factors that motivate landowners to grow biomass energy crops. A geographic information system model identifies a landowner...

We seek to determine if the tax-based payment approach is a valid alternative to existing incentive payment approaches for forest carbon sequestration. To achieve the objective, we test a hypothesis that waiving the property tax rate on forestland provides incentives to landowners for...

Playas are small wetlands, averaging 14 acres in area, which periodically fill with rainwater and evaporate, and are not connected to any other body of surface water. On the Texas High Plains, the roughly 17,000 existing playas are a source of recharge for the Ogallala aquifer and the greatest...

Communities along the US coast are highly vulnerable to coastal storms. Trends in population growth, climatic events and land use are likely to exacerbate future damages. Coastal management entities are faced with decisions about how to manage resources in a manner that improves environmental...

We examine the role of spatial interactions in conservation easements placed on prairie pothole habitat in western Canada. One of the goals of the conservation easement program we study is to protect contiguous habitat. We identify endogenous spatial interactions among conservation easements and...