Source: UNIV OF MASSACHUSETTS submitted to NRP
MEASURING THE SOCIAL COSTS OF NUTRIENT POLLUTION THROUGH INTEGRATED ASSESSMENT MODELING
Sponsoring Institution
National Institute of Food and Agriculture
Project Status
ACTIVE
Funding Source
AFRI COMPETITIVE GRANT
Reporting Frequency
Annual
Accession No.
1028343
Grant No.
2022-67023-36377
Cumulative Award Amt.
$649,697.00
Proposal No.
2021-12011
Multistate No.
(N/A)
Project Start Date
Sep 1, 2022
Project End Date
Aug 31, 2026
Grant Year
2022
Program Code
[A1641]- Agriculture Economics and Rural Communities: Markets and Trade
Recipient Organization
UNIV OF MASSACHUSETTS
(N/A)
AMHERST,MA 01003
Performing Department
Dept: Resource Economics
Non Technical Summary
This Environmental and Natural Resource Economics proposal addresses nutrient pollution from agriculture, the impact of pollution on the value of ecosystem services, metrics to measure those impacts nationwide, and makes significant advances in integrating ecological and environmental science models and methods. This team of economists, agricultural engineers, and water quality modelers will develop a national integrated assessment model (IAM) to measure the social costs of nutrient pollution across the United States. The new model, HydroEcon, combines economic modules of water resources with a national Soil Water and Assessment+ (SWAT+) hydrological model, the National Agroecosystems Model (NAM). Key economic considerations include impacts on housing, water-based recreational use, drinking water treatment, human health, climate change, and non-use values. The project will use HydroEcon to estimate the spatially-explicit and aggregate national damages from nutrient pollution and corresponding net benefits of USDA's main conservation programs such as the Conservation Reserve Program and Environmental Quality Incentives Program. The project will also use HydroEcon to analyze how net benefits of water quality improvements vary based on socioeconomic factors such as income, race, and the rural/urban divide. This study will incorporate anticipated changes in climate to understand how climate change will impact the overall net benefits of USDA's conservation programs and the distribution consequences of such changes. A web-based platform will display key metrics on the spatially-explicit costs and benefits of USDA programs by county and by watershed across the continental United States.
Animal Health Component
50%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
40%
Applied
50%
Developmental
10%
Classification

Knowledge Area (KA)Subject of Investigation (SOI)Field of Science (FOS)Percent
6050210301080%
1120399205020%
Knowledge Area
605 - Natural Resource and Environmental Economics; 112 - Watershed Protection and Management;

Subject Of Investigation
0210 - Water resources; 0399 - Watersheds and river basins, general;

Field Of Science
2050 - Hydrology; 3010 - Economics;
Goals / Objectives
This project seeks to develop new metrics to measure the impacts of nutrient pollution on the value of ecosystem services in the United States through significant advances in integrating ecological and environmental science models and methods. The team will develop a national integrated assessment model (IAM) to measure the social costs of nutrient pollution across the United States. The new model, HydroEcon, combines economic modules of water resources with a national Soil Water and Assessment+ (SWAT+) hydrological model, the National Agroecosystems Model (NAM). The project has three primary goals:Goal I: Develop a next-generation, national IAM (HydroEcon). This model will integrate the social costs of nutrients with a cutting-edge water quality model to provide the needed basis for future policy design. The model will measure and predict how nutrient pollution generates economic impacts through housing, recreation, drinking water treatment, health, climate change, and nonuse value mechanisms.Goal II: Employ this state-of-the-art tool to support policy evaluation and analysis of USDA conservation programs, including distributional consequences and climate change impacts. Once completed, HydroEcon will offer a powerful tool to estimate the spatially explicit and aggregated national damages from nutrient pollution. We will employ the tool to evaluate the benefits of two key USDA key conservation programs, the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) and the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP). We will also calculate net benefits based on program costs. In performing these evaluations, we will provide metrics of how benefits of water quality improvements vary with socioeconomic factors such as income, race, and the rural/urban divide to provide meaningful information on the distributional aspects of these essential programs. We will also undertake climate scenario modeling using HydroEcon to predict how the damages from nutrient pollution and the benefits of conservation programs will change with projected changes in climate, thereby allowing proactive policy design.Goal III: Develop a web-based platform for displaying metrics on the spatially-explicit nationwide costs and benefits of USDA programs. To make the results of this work accessible to stakeholders and the general public, we will create an interactive web-based tool. This tool will display the distribution of social costs of nutrient pollution, accompanied by the social benefits (reductions in the social costs) that accrue from USDA conservation programs by county and watershed across the continental United States.To achieve these goals, the project has eight primary objectives:Objective #1: Theoretical Framework. Develop a theoretical model that guides our aggregation of economic benefits from water quality improvements across multiple uses.Objective #2: SWAT+/NAM Programming Advancements. Develop programming routines in NAM that predict changes in ambient river, stream, and lake concentrations of Total N and Total P from changes in marginal loadings in each HUC12 of the United States. Develop programming routines in NAM that assess CRP and EQIP programs. Develop routines to estimate how climate change may alter nutrient concentrations.Objective #3: Economic Modules. Develop and refine economic modules to measure the benefits of water quality improvements based on housing prices, water-based recreation, drinking water treatment costs, health outcomes, climate change, and nonuse values.Objective #4: Synchronizing Models. Synchronize hydrological outputs from NAM with corresponding input requirements of the economic modules.Objective #5: Estimating Pollution Damages, Benefits of Conservation Programs, and Impacts from Climate Change. Measure spatially-explicit marginal and total damages from nutrient pollution in the United States and examine benefits of USDA conservation programs, including the CRP and EQIP. Examine anticipated changes in benefits due to climate change.Objective #6: Examining Distribution of Benefits. Estimate the distribution of economic damages of nutrient pollution and the benefits of USDA conservation programs along socioeconomic dimensions such as income, race, and the urban/rural divide.Objective #7: Incorporating Cost Data. Collect and analyze spatially-explicit cost data on key USDA conservation programs such as the CRP and EQIP. Use these data to measure net benefits.Objective #8: Web-based Public Interface. Develop a dynamic web-based interface that provides key metrics on the costs and benefits of nutrient pollution and USDA conservation programs.
Project Methods
Our methods align closely with our objectives. We detail them below:Method to Address Objective #1: Theoretical Framework: Our project will use economic theory to develop a strong theoretical foundation for the social cost of nutrient pollution. We will pay particular attention to the need to aggregate nutrient damages across mulitple economic uses.Methods to Address Objective #2: SWAT+/NAM Programming Advancements.There are a number of programming advances that will be necessary to develop in SWAT+ and NAM. First we will use a simplified modeling framework based on the widely used concepts of Export Coefficients (EC) and Delivery Ratios (DR) to distill the hydrological modeling from our national model. To do so, we will extract ECs from NAM and estimate point and non-point source loads to streams. Second, we will extract DRs from NAM and develop an automated routine to run scenarios for estimating the benefits of nutrient reductions. Third, we will use NAM to measure benefits of CRP, EQIP, and other USDA conservation programs. Fourth, we will incorporate climate change projections.Methods to Address Objective #3: Economic Modules.We will build on and expand current work by the PIs that focuses on several economic modules to estimate spatially-explicit benefits of water quality improvements. These modules will provide the link between ambient nutrient concentrations and economic value. By capturing multiple value generating mechanisms, HydroEcon will provide a robust measure of the total benefits of water quality improvements. First, we will develop a national housing module. Second, we will develop a national recreational module. Third, we will develop a drinking water treatment cost module. Fourth, we will develop a human health module. Fifth, we will develop a climate change module. Last, we will develop a nonuse and total value module.Methods to Address Objective #4: Synchronize Models.We will link NAM to our economic modules. To do so, we will focus on the temporal and spatial scales of NAM output and the input requirements of our economic modules to ensure a complete link between emissions and economic value.Methods to Address Objective #5: Estimate Benefits.We will use our linked NAM and economic modules to estimate the benefits of major USDA conservation programs, including CRP and EQIP. This will provide information on the benefits of targeting these programs based on a wide range of policy goals, including economic efficiency and socioeconomic distributional considerationsMethods to Address Objective #6: Examine the Distribution of Benefits.We will combine our estimates of the benefits of conservation programs with data on socioeconomic characteristics of surrounding populations to estimate how benefits vary across these characteristics.Methods to Address Objective #7: Incorporating Cost DataWe will request information from USDA on the type, location, and costs of conservation practices and programs, including the CRP and EQIP. We will incorporate these data into HydroEcon.Methods to Address Objective #8: Web-based Public InterfaceWe will develop a web-based public interface to communicate our new metrics to other researchers, policymakers, and the general public. This interface will detail the location and amount of conservation programs by county. It will also display the corresponding marginal and total benefits of nutrient pollution reduction and conservation programs by county. We will use html programming language to develop our website.

Progress 09/01/23 to 08/31/24

Outputs
Target Audience:We presented our work to a broad audience of academics, including economists, hydrologists, ecologists, agricultural engineers, among others. We also presented our research at Arizona State, Cal Tech, University of Oklahoma, Yale, the annual ASSA meeting, USDA Project Directors Meeting, and the Social Cost of Water Pollution Workshop in Washington, DC, which was attended by economists, engineers, ecologists and federal scientists. Changes/Problems:There were no major problems this past year. However, the developing of the hydrological models has been a little slower than anticipated due to the complexity of the modeling frameworks. To prevent this issue from slowing down the development of our integrated assessment model, we have swapped in the USGS's SPARROW modeling framework to provide routing and decay of nutrient pollution throughout the conterminous US. We plan to use this modeling framework in our first academic paper. However, we will continue to pursue to development and use of SWAT+/NAM as an alternative framework for use in future iterations of our IAM. Indeed, some of our team members are working on additional academic publications that will communicate this framework (Drs. Arnold, White, Shinde, Bieger, and Keiser). What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?This project continues to provide training and professional development for Dr. Nilesh Shinde (a postdoc at UMass Amherst). Dr. Shinde has improved his knowledge of non-market valuation techniques used to measure the benefits of water quality. He also has become a leading expert in integrating economic and hydrological models. He was able to visit Drs. Arnold and White twice in our last reporting cycle to meet in-person to learn more about the hydrological models (SWAT+/NAM). He has started writing papers to advance the hydrological modeling framework we are using. Dr. Shinde has also met weekly via zoom with the economics team (Drs. Keiser, Phaneuf, Kling, Ji, and Shr) and meets regularly via Zoom with Dr. Bieger to learn more about hydrological models. Dr. Shinde was also able to visit Dr. Phaneuf at Wisconsin-Madison to improve his knowledge of non-market valuation techniques and teach Dr. Phaneuf about the integrated hydrological-economic modeling. These experiences have provided him with a broad mentoring network and enhanced his professional network. He also had the opportunity to present updates of our work at the Project Directors meeting, since Dr. Keiser was unable to attend. This project also continues to provide the opportunity for one PhD student at the University of Wisconsin to learn more about non-market valuation methods as related to measuring the economic benefits of water quality improvements. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?We presented our work to a broad audience of academics, including economists, hydrologists, ecologists, agricultural engineers, among others. We also presented our research at Arizona State, Cal Tech, University of Oklahoma, Yale, the annual ASSA meeting, USDA Project Directors Meeting, and the Social Cost of Water Pollution Workshop in Washington, DC, which was attended by economists, engineers, ecologists and federal scientists. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?During our next reporting period, we plan to finalize our primary integrated assessment model. We plan to submit a journal article detailing this model and presenting the first national GDP-equivalent measures of the damages of a major class of water pollutants. We then will turn our attention to Goals II and III and corresponding objectives 6 and 7 to incorporate cost data and measuring the benefits of conservation programs (Objectives 6 and 7). We also plan to continue to make progress on developing a SWAT+/NAM model that is academically rigorous, but capable of quickly conducting policy analysis (Objective 2). We will ramp up our efforts to develop a web-based platform to communicate our findings (Goal III and Objective 8). We have a draft version of this program.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? Our team has made excellent progress on Goal I (develop the IAM) and related Objectives 1-6. We now have a working integrated assessment model that tracks nutrient pollution from its watershed specific sources to downstream economic uses and damages. Our theoretical model is largely complete, but subject to small refinements (Objective 1). We have worked with SWAT+/NAM to re-program the model to be supportive our of IAM approach and are working to build a new version of these models for ease of policy evaluation. While we wait for these models to be complete, we have swapped in the USGS's SPARROW model to provide routing and decay of nutrient pollution.Our postdoctoral candidate (Dr. Nilesh Shinde) continues to work closely with Drs. Bieger, Arnold, and White to enhance the hydrological models used in our IAM and have also begun two separate works in progress that will be stand alone papers detailing these advances (Objective 2). We have working versions of 4 economic modules, including for recreation, housing prices, drinking water treatment, and climate damages (Objective 3). We have synchronized these models with hydrological outputs (Objective 4). We have used our IAM to produce draft estimates of the spatially-explicit marginal and Gross External Damages of nutrient pollution (Objective 5) and have begun to explore the distribution of these benefits across space and socioeconomic characteristics (Objective 6). We have a draft version of a web-based platform to communicate our findings to a broad audience (Objective 8 and Goal 3). Many of the economists were able to meet in-person at the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists meeting to discuss these goals and objectives and to ensure we are on track.

Publications


    Progress 09/01/22 to 08/31/23

    Outputs
    Target Audience:We presented our work to a broad audience of academics, including economists, hydrologists, ecologists, agricultural engineers, among others. This included research seminars at UC San Diego, The Environmental and Energy Economics Workshop in Austin, TX, UW Madison, and the University of Alaska-Anchorage. We also presented our research at the Social Cost of Water Pollution Workshop in Washington, DC, which was attended by federal scientists and economists. Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?This project has provided training and professional development for Dr. Nilesh Shinde (a postdoc at UMass Amherst). Dr. Shinde has learned about non-market valuation techniques related to measuring the damages from water pollution. Dr. Shinde has also learned about the inner workings of SWAT and NAM, which has allowed him to learn how to synchronize economic and hydrological models. Dr. Shinde also had the opportunity to present the research from this work at the Social Cost of Water Pollution Workshop in Washington, DC. This was an excellent opportunity to learn how to present research, answer questions as part of a panel, and network with academics and federal scientists. This project also provided the opportunity for one PhD student at the University of Wisconsin to learn more about non-market valuation methods as related to measuring the economic benefits of water quality improvements. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?We presented our work to a broad audience of academics, including economists, hydrologists, ecologists, agricultural engineers, among others. This included research seminars at UC San Diego, The Environmental and Energy Economics Workshop in Austin, TX, UW Madison, and the University of Alaska-Anchorage. We also presented our research at the Social Cost of Water Pollution Workshop in Washington, DC, which was attended by federal scientists and economists. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?Our major goal during the next reporting period is to have a complete working version of the IAM (Goal 1). This involves continuing to work to synchronize the output from NAM with our economic modules so that we can account for local and downstream impacts to water quality throughout the continental US. Once this model is built, we hope to write a working academic paper describing the marginal and total damages from nutrient pollution in the US. We will then move towards Goals 2 (policy scenario analyses) and 3 (website development), as well as corresponding objectives 5-8. We will continue to meet weekly as a team and weekly within our smaller sub-units focused on linking NAM with our economic modules. We will also plan for Dr. Shinde to visit Texas again this year to discuss linking the economic modules and NAM.

    Impacts
    What was accomplished under these goals? Our team has made good progress on Goal I (develop the IAM) and related Objectives 1-4. We kicked off our project with a whole team meeting at the Texas A&M AgriLife Blackland Research & Extension Center in Temple, Texas in Fall 2022. Here, we revisited our key goals of the project and spent several days outlining the programming necessary to link economic modules of nutrient pollution damages with our continental scale hydrological model (NAM). The economists on the team meet weekly to discuss the overall project goals and objectives and move forward the development of the IAM (Objective 1). Dr. Keiser leads these meetings. Drs. Keiser, Shinde, and Andarge also meet separately once a week to discuss efforts to link the economic modules with NAM. Other project meetings are held as necessary. For instance, several team members met regularly when developing and updating the economic modules. And we meet more regularly prior to a major presentation. To date, we have a draft of a preliminary working theoretical framework that guides our aggregation of economic benefits (Objective 1). We have also spent considerable time obtaining the infrastructure necessary to house the data output from NAM at UMass Amherst and write code that can easily summarize this output at the HUC 8 and 12 watershed scale for use in linking to our economic modules (Ojjective 2). A challenge that we continue to work to solve is writing software that allows us to capture the decay and routing of nutrient pollution for each individual watershed. This routing and decay work is necessary to estimate spatially-explicit marginal damages. We have also spent considerable time creating and revising economic modules on recreation, housing price impacts, drinking water treatment, and climate change (Objective 3). These modules link changes in nutrient pollution (N and P) to changes in economic use and value. Draft modules are now complete, though we may revisit these once we have a working IAM. We have begun Objective 4 and have worked to synchronize output from NAM with our economic modules. This was a key objective of our whole team meeting in Fall 2022. Recently, our postdoctoral scholar, Dr. Nilesh Shinde again visited Drs. Arnold and White (along with Dr. Bieger) in Texas to continue to work to synchronize our models. We have estimated preliminary marginal and total damages from nitrogen pollution in the continental US based on preliminary, uncalibrated N and P loads from NAM. These estimates do not yet account for downstream impacts, but do provide informative information about local impacts and provide a template for our next round of estimates. We feel encouraged by our successes to date and look forward to moving the development of the IAM forward.

    Publications