Andrea Ghermandi

The Economic Value of Wetland Conservation and Creation: A Meta-Analysis

The rationale for conservation and creation of wetlands stems from the recognition of both their ecological and economic values. This paper examines the welfare impacts of goods and services provided by wetlands. We collected 385 estimates of the economic value of 181 natural and man-made wetlands from 167 studies worldwide. The resulting database is less biased towards North America than previous reviews of the literature. The relative importance of characteristics of the valuation study, of the wetland site, and of the socio-economic and geographical context is estimated by means of a meta-regression analysis of wetland values. Provision of amenities, flood control and storm buffering, and water quality improvement are the most highly valued wetland services. The relevance of the socio-economic and geographical context clearly emerges from the analysis and, in particular, the proximity to other wetland sites is negatively correlated with valuations. An analysis of the effect of environmental stress on wetland value shows that the latter increases with stress from human development activities and uses. In addition to the basic meta-regression model, the influence of authorship effects and of the geographic regions is examined by means of a multi-level approach. A second extended meta-regression model including cross-effects shows that the valuations of specific services vary according to the type of wetland producing them.

Techno-economic analysis of combined concentrating solar power and desalination plant configurations in Israel and Jordan

Abstract Combined concentrating solar power (CSP) and desalination plants represent a realistic future option for the production of electricity and fresh water for countries of the world’s sunbelt. In this paper, parabolic trough power plants for electricity production have been analysed in combination with multi-effect distillation (MED) and ultrafiltration/reverse osmosis (RO) desalination plants for two sites in Israel (Ashdod) and Jordan (Aqaba). Both RO and MED desalination plants were designed for a fresh water production capacity of 24,000 m3/d. The power block of the CSP plant was selected to meet the steam consumption of the MED plant at the design point, which led to a gross electrical power generation capacity of the power block of 42 MWel. Due to the low availability and generally high cost of coastal land, the CSP + RO plant consists of two separate units. It was assumed that the CSP plant is located at an inland location where there is land available. The RO plant is located at the sea, whil...

Benefits of coastal recreation in Europe: identifying trade-offs and priority regions for sustainable management.

This paper examines the welfare dimension of the recreational services of coastal ecosystems through the application of a meta-analytical value transfer framework, which integrates Geographic Information Systems (GIS) for the characterization of climate, biodiversity, accessibility, and anthropogenic pressure in each of 368 regions of the European coastal zone. The relative contribution of international, domestic, and local recreationists to aggregated regional values is examined. The implications of the analysis for prioritization of conservation areas and identification of good management practices are highlighted through the comparative assessment of estimated recreation values, current environmental pressures, and existing network of protected sites.

Scaling up Ecosystem Services Values: Methodology, Applicability and a Case Study

The approach of using existing data on economic values of local ecosystem services for an assessment of these values at a larger geographical scale can be called “scaling up”. In a scaling-up exercise, economic values from a particular study site are transferred to another geographical setting, for instance to the regional, national or global scale. This paper proposes a methodology for scaling up ecosystem service values to a European level, assesses the availability of data for conducting this method, and illustrates the procedure with a case study on wetland values. The proposed methodology makes use of meta-analysis to produce a value function that is subsequently applied to individual European wetland sites. Site-specific, study-specific and context-specific variables are used to define a price vector that captures differences between sites and over time. The proposed method is shown to be practicable and to produce reasonably reliable aggregate value estimates.

Analysis of intensity and spatial patterns of public use in natural treatment systems using geotagged photos from social media.

Patterns of public use in 273 natural treatment systems worldwide are investigated by means of geotagged data from two popular photo-sharing websites, using spatial analysis and regression techniques. Standardized Major Axis (SMA) regression is found to perform better than other univariate calibration models in terms of goodness of fit with reported visitation frequencies and predictive accuracy, and is used to predict visitation rates in 139 systems that are associated with at least one geotagged photograph. High visitation rates are found in free-water surface (FWS) constructed wetlands and mixed pond-constructed wetlands systems, as well as systems treating surface water or stormwater runoff. Geographic Information System (GIS) techniques are used to map hot and cold spots of public use in two highly visited systems. Binomial logit regression reveals that the probability to be associated with at least one geotagged photograph is a function of system size, system type, and influent water quality. The findings are discussed in terms of their implications for the evaluation of public use in multifunctional ecologically engineered systems as well as the applicability of the proposed methodology to other natural and man-made ecosystems.

The Values of Natural and Constructed Wetlands: A Meta-Analysis

The values of goods and services provided by natural and constructed wetlands are examined through a meta-analysis of 418 observations of the economic value of 186 wetlands. Water quality improvement, non-consumptive recreation, and provision of natural habitat and biodiversity turn out to be highly valued services. Substitution effects are observed through the negative correlation between values and proximity to other wetlands. Values are found to increase with anthropogenic pressure. Constructed wetlands are highly valued for biodiversity enhancement, water quality improvement, and flood control. This study provides a substantially new contribution in relation to previous meta-analyses of the wetland valuation literature.

Solar desalination for sustainable brackish water management in arid land agriculture

An agricultural facility aimed at sustainable production of crops in arid environments was built and tested in Hatzeva, Israel. The facility relies on solar-powered desalination with nanofiltration membranes to treat the local brackish water (EC=2.32dSm �1 ) and produce high-quality irrigation water (EC=0.71dSm �1 ). Red beet, a salt-tolerant crop, was grown with the concentrate stream (EC=4.73dSm �1 ), eliminating the need for concentrate disposal and with potential net economic benefits. Agricultural experiments with variable irrigation water quality, application rate, and four staple crops (potato, maize, millet and sorghum) were conducted over two growing seasons between September 2010 and June 2011. The desalination plant operated at low pressure (4.3 bar) and energy consumption (1.37kWhm �3 ) and with little maintenance over the entire study period. The results of the agricultural experiments consistently showed that irrigation with desalinated water promoted more efficient use of resources such as water and inorganic fertilizers. A reduction of 25% in the irrigation rate and use of fertilizers compared with best-practice guidelines was achieved with desalinated water, with no detectable detrimental effect on the marketable yield. On the contrary, a statistically significant yield increasewasobservedforsorghum (+10%).Anincreaseinwaterproductivitywithdesalinatedwaterwasobservedforall four staple crops.

INTEGRATION OF GENERAL AND PARTIAL EQUILIBRIUM AGRICULTURAL LAND-USE TRANSFORMATION FOR THE ANALYSIS OF CLIMATE CHANGE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN

This study presents an internal modification of a dynamic computable general equilibrium model, ICES, employing inputs from a partial equilibrium model for the agricultural sector, VALUE. The aim is to quantify and analyze the medium-term socio-economic consequences of projected climate change. The methodology is innovative as it combines state-of-the-art knowledge from economic and biophysical sources and is demonstrated in application to two Mediterrenean countries: Israel and Italy. The information from the VALUE model was incorporated into the ICES economic model to improve the agricultural production structure. The new land allocation method takes into account the variation of substitutability across different types of land use. It captures agronomic features included in the VALUE model. This modification gives a better representation of heterogeneous information of land productivity to the economic framework. Climate impacts and policy evaluation with ICES are reinforced due to the more refined system of land allocation. This exercise is original in its ability to base the analysis on empirically estimated parameters rather than on assumptions, as in other studies of this kind. Notably, we suggest diverse land Constant Elasticity of Transformation (CET) frontiers for two main ecological regions in the Mediterranean basin for a more accurate representation of agronomic characteristics. Using the modified ICES model we evaluate climate change impact on agricultural production in the Mediterranean region.

A crowdsourced valuation of recreational ecosystem services using social media data: An application to a tropical wetland in India

Online social media represent an extensive, opportunistic source of behavioral data and revealed preferences for ecosystem services (ES) analysis. Such data may allow to advance the approach, scale and timespan to which ES are assessed, mapping and valued. This is especially relevant in the context of developing regions whose decision support tools are often limited by a lack of resources and funding. This research presents an economic valuation tool for recreational ES, suitable at wide spatial scales, relying on crowdsourced metadata from social media with a proof of concept tested on an Indian tropical Ramsar wetland. We demonstrate how geotagged photographs from Flickr can be used in the context of a developing country to (i) map nature-based recreation patterns, (ii) value recreational ecosystem services, and (iii) investigate how recreational benefits are affected by changes in ecosystem quality. The case-study application is the Vembanad Lake in Kerala, India, and the adjacent backwaters. Geographic Information Systems are implemented to extract 4328 Flickr photographs that are used to map hot spots of recreation and infer the home location of wetland visitors from within Kerala state with good accuracy. An individual, single-site travel cost demand function is generated and estimated using both Poisson and Negative Binomial regressions, which results in mean consumer surplus estimates between Rs. 2227-3953 (

Values of natural and human‐made wetlands: A meta‐analysis

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