This is a print on demand edition of a hard to find publication. Knowledge about the value of water to different users and methods with which to evaluate biophysical, economic, ecological, and social tradeoffs associated with allocating limited water resources among competing uses is vital to devising appropriate and effective water resource policies. Intended primarily for non-economists, this report reviews existing water resource economics literature (as of 2002) concerning the economic value of water in different uses in the Pacific Northwest, the evaluation of tradeoffs among uses, and the use of economic incentives for water conservation and protection or enhancement of water quality. Includes an annotated bibliography of water resource economics research.

Balancing society's multiple and sometimes competing objectives regarding forests calls for information describing the direct and indirect benefits resulting from forest policy and management, whether to address wildfire, loss of open space, unmanaged recreation, ecosystem restoration, or other objectives. The USDA Forest Service recently has proposed the concept of ecosystem services as a framework for (1) describing the many benefits provided by public and private forests, (2), evaluating the effects of policy and management decisions involving public and private forest lands, and (3) advocating the use of economic and market-based incentives to protect private forest lands from development. The concept extends traditional economic theory regarding multiple forest benefits and the use of economic incentives to enhance their provision, by emphasizing ecosystems as an organizing structure for benefits. Although the emphasis on ecosystems is new, challenges in evaluating ecosystem services are similar to those long faced by economists tasked with evaluating forest benefits: (1) defining a typology of ecosystem services, (2) describing and measuring ecosystem services units or outputs, and (3) describing and measuring ecosystem services per unit of values or social weights. Progress within the Forest Service in applying the ecosystem services concept to forest policy and management will depend on knowing what information will suffice, working across disciplines, deciding on appropriate analytical frameworks, defining the appropriate role of economic and market-based incentives, and adequately funding economics research.

We examine socioeconomic factors affecting water demand and expected trends in these factors. Based on these trends, we identify past, current, and projected withdrawal of surface water for various uses in Pacific Coast States (California, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington), including public, domestic, commercial, industrial, thermoelectric, livestock, and irrigation. Additionally, we identify projected demands for nonconsumptive instream recreational uses of water, such as boating, swimming, and fishing, which can compete with consumptive uses. Allocating limited water resources across multiple users will present water resource managers and policymakers with distinct challenges as water demands increase. To illustrate these challenges, we present a case study of issues in the Klamath Basin of northern California and southern Oregon. The case study provides an example of the issues involved in allocating scarce water among diverse users and uses, and the difficulties policymakers face when attempting to design water allocation policies that require tradeoffs among economic, ecological, and societal values.

Water is the source of life, the sustenance for living, the resource needed for mfg., mining, ag.; the element required to grow our lawns, to water our landscaping, to shower us with refreshment; it is the place where we play; it provides the snow for our winter recreation, and it provides the habitat for our wildlife. Water in Amer. society is more than a physical entity; its symbolic values and non-instrumental uses are growing in significance. This book is about the issues associated with these symbolic values and uses of water: the challenges they present -- in our language, in our allocation mechanisms, in our commun. -- the conflicts raised; and the potential for resolving the difficult, contentious and complex issues concerning the use of water for various purposes.

This book assesses recent developments in the analysis of agricultural policy and water resource management, and highlights the utility and theoretical rigor of quantitative methods for modeling agricultural production, market dynamics, and natural resource management. In diverse case studies of the intersection between agriculture, environmental quality and natural resource sustainability, the authors analyze economic behavior - both at aggregate as well as at individual agent-level - in order to highlight the practical implications for decision-markers dealing with environmental and agricultural policy. The volume also addresses the challenges of doing robust analysis with limited data, and discusses the appropriate empirical approaches that can be employed. The studies in this book were inspired by the work of Richard E. Howitt, Emeritus Professor of Agricultural Economics at the University of California at Davis, USA, whose career has focused on the application of robust empirical methods to address concrete policy problems.

This analysis examines the problem of measuring demand for recreation on national forests and other public lands. Current measures of recreation demand in Forest Service resource assessments and planning emphasize population-level participation rates and activity-based economic values for visitor days. Alternative measures and definitions of recreation demand are presented, including formal economic demand and multiattribute preferences. Recreation assessments from national-level Renewable Resources Planning Act Assessments to site-level demand studies are reviewed to identify methods used for demand analysis at different spatial scales. A finding throughout the multiple scales of analysis, with the exception of site-level studies, is that demand measures are not integrated with supply measures. Supply analyses, in the context of resource assessments, have taken the form of mapped spatial inventories of recreation resources on the national forests, based on the classification of recreational settings according to the opportunities they produce (e.g., the Recreation Opportunity Spectrum). As such, integration of demand analysis with these measures of supply requires measuring the demand for recreational settings. To support management and planning decisions, recreation demand analysis must also permit projection of changes in visitation at multiple scales as changes in management and policy alter recreational settings, and as the demographics and behavior of the user base changes through time. Although this is currently being done through many formal economic studies of site demand, methods are needed that scale up to higher levels of spatial aggregation. Several areas for research, development and application of improved methods for demand analysis are identified, and improved methods for spatially explicit models of recreation visitation and demand are identified as a priority area for research.