TY - JOUR

T1 - Economic/ecological tradeoffs among ecosystem services and biodiversity conservation

AU - Hussain, Abul Maala Tanvir

AU - Tschirhart, John

PY - 2013/9

Y1 - 2013/9

N2 - An integrated economic/ecological model is built to address tradeoffs betweenbiodiversity conservation and two marketable rangeland ecosystem services: cattle grazing and elk hunting. The ecology is represented by an eleven species food web in which individual optimizing plants and animals engage in competitive and predator/prey relationships. The ecological model defines a steady-state set of sustainable grazing and hunting options, and for each option biodiversity is measured using an index defined over the eleven species. In linking the ecology to the economics, social welfare depends on grazing profits and hunter net benefits. The problem can be stated as maximizing economic welfare over two ecosystem services, subject to their sustainable use and subject to a target level of biodiversity. A numerical application with economic and biological data from the Western United States is used to determine sustainable grazing and hunting options for alternative biodiversity levels, and to select the option that maximizes welfare.

AB - An integrated economic/ecological model is built to address tradeoffs betweenbiodiversity conservation and two marketable rangeland ecosystem services: cattle grazing and elk hunting. The ecology is represented by an eleven species food web in which individual optimizing plants and animals engage in competitive and predator/prey relationships. The ecological model defines a steady-state set of sustainable grazing and hunting options, and for each option biodiversity is measured using an index defined over the eleven species. In linking the ecology to the economics, social welfare depends on grazing profits and hunter net benefits. The problem can be stated as maximizing economic welfare over two ecosystem services, subject to their sustainable use and subject to a target level of biodiversity. A numerical application with economic and biological data from the Western United States is used to determine sustainable grazing and hunting options for alternative biodiversity levels, and to select the option that maximizes welfare.

KW - Sustainability Science

KW - Ecosystem services

KW - Biodiversity

KW - Threshold

KW - Multispecies

KW - Economic/ecological integration

KW - Rangelands

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84878949923&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2013.04.013

DO - 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2013.04.013

M3 - Journal articles

VL - 93

SP - 116

EP - 127

JO - Ecological Economics

JF - Ecological Economics

SN - 0921-8009

ER -