1. June 2010 Gabriel Sampson

2. Introduction Opportunity cost in conservation selection Conservation program costs reduced considerably when land costs considered (Ando et al., 1998) Feasibility of land-valuation models in conservation planning

3. Goals Hedonic model for Sonoma County Arrive at planning unit costs that reflect the land market Optimize conservation targets subject to realistic economic costs Compare to results using the old cost

4. Methods – hedonic model Observed market transactions for Sonoma County parcels 1991-2001 Discarded observations: industrial, commercial, condominium, restaurant, hotels, etc. 348 observations used

5. Hedonic model Selected independent variables (Newburn et al., 2006) Acres Persons per acre Distance to roads Farmland (binary) Grazing (binary) Easement (binary) Fee, mixed, transfer (binary) High risk (binary)

6. Regression model

7. Predicted planning unit costs

9. Scaled planning unit cost

10. Old planning unit costs

11. Using Marxan Optimize conservation targets with Marxan Modeled planning unit cost Modeled average cost/acre transformed to a scale of 100-1000 The old cost scale of 100-1000

12. Modeled planning unit cost

13. Absolute costs vs. old costs

14. Re-scaled costs vs. old costs

15. Site selection correlation

17. Model limitations Planning unit prices extrapolated from limited APN data Need to address land use change jointly with purchase cost (Newburn et al, 2005) Management costs not captured How would conservation influence future development patterns? 10 iterations in Marxan runs

18. Concluding remarks Strong correlation between site selections Variance in mid selection frequencies Irreplaceability may supersede site cost

19. References Ando, A.J., Camm, J., Polasky, S., Solow, A. (1998). Species Distributions, Land Values, and Efficient Conservation. Science 279:2126-28. Newburn, D., Berck, P., Merenlender, A. (2006) Habitat and Open Space at Risk of Land-Use Conversion: Targeting Strategies for Land Conservation. American Journal of Agricultural Economics 88(1):28-42. Newburn, D., Reed, S., Berck, P., Merenlender, A. (2005). Economics and Land Use Change in Prioritizing Land Conservation. Conservation Biology 1411-1420.

20. Re-scaled selection

21. Old cost selection