Three essays on water quality policy and conservation practice evaluation

Hsieh, Hsin-Chieh

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/125557 Copy

Description

Title

Three essays on water quality policy and conservation practice evaluation

Author(s)

Hsieh, Hsin-Chieh

Issue Date

2024-07-07

Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)

Gramig, Benjamin M.

Doctoral Committee Chair(s)

Gramig, Benjamin M.

Committee Member(s)

• Atallah, Shadi
• Christensen, Peter
• Szmurlo, Daniel

Department of Study

Agr & Consumer Economics

Discipline

Agricultural & Applied Econ

Degree Granting Institution

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Degree Level

Dissertation

Keyword(s)

• non-point source pollution
• CSP
• cover crops
• OpTIS
• EQIP
• Illinois River
• Mississippi River
• nitrogen

Abstract

Non-point source pollution from agriculture has been identified as the leading cause of water quality impairments in the United States. Excess nutrients (e.g., phosphorus, P, nitrogen, N) degrade waterways, and eutrophication leads to hypoxia or ”dead zones” in water bodies. The federal government has invested billions of dollars in voluntary incentive-based conservation programs to encourage farmers and ranchers to adopt conservation practices on their working lands. However, the realized environmental benefits attributed to those conservation programs and practices still remain unclear and incomplete. In this dissertation, I evaluate the effects of the two largest working lands conservation programs (in terms of acreage and spending) and the conservation practice cover crops on ambient water quality. The first chapter discusses the Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP) in the Illinois River Basin (ILRB), a tributary of the Mississippi River that drains Illinois and smaller areas of Indiana and Wisconsin in the Corn Belt region. The hypoxic zone in the Gulf of Mexico is the result of intensive agriculture in the Midwest that is drained by the Mississippi River. The economics literature has explored the effects of conservation programs on retired lands (e.g., slippage and additionality), and their impacts on ambient water quality have been studied by integrating with engineering simulation models. However, the econometric evidence of the effect of working land conservation programs on ambient water quality remains unknown. The first chapter aims to isolate the impact of the CSP, a cost-share program designed for farm operators who have already adopted some conservation practices and plan to adopt more or expand their use of these practices, on surface water quality (i.e., total nitrogen) in the IRB. This study found that a ten percent increase in the percentage of land enrolled in CSP reduces ambient nitrogen concentration by 0.5 to 1.0 mg/l in the ILRB. The estimated amount of abatement is equivalent to 12 to 23 percent of the average nitrogen measurements. In the second chapter, I examine cover crop (CC) adoption to determine how this soil health practice has influenced agricultural non-point source pollution in the U.S. Corn Belt. I use remotely sensed data on practice adoption, and control for hydrological flow direction, weather and land use to estimate the ex post impact of CC on total Nitrogen concentrations in surface water while controlling for pollutant spillovers from upstream. At the mean treatment level in the study area (3.2%), a 1% increase in CC adoption results in a 0.05 mg/L (2%) reduction in concentration in the study area. Results provide novel estimates based on observed data that can be compared to biophysical simulations of CC effectiveness. The last chapter evaluates the effect of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) administered Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) on ambient water quality (i.e., total inorganic nitrogen). The EQIP is the largest and longest-running agriculture conservation financial and technical assistance program targeting working lands and supports national policy goals to reduce nonpoint source pollution in impaired watersheds. However, the econometric evidence of the effect of working lands agri-environmental programs on ambient water quality remains limited. Recent peer-reviewed research has used EQIP contract data to evaluate the program’s impact on water quality, but it has several limitations. Our study provides a more comprehensive analysis than prior work by including the entire program duration and the period before EQIP was first authorized in the 1996 farm bill. The data we employ to identify this effect are watershed-level dollars of EQIP cost-share assistance from 1996 to the present paired with water quality data where monitoring stations are located. Each monitoring location measurement reflects drainage from upstream areas with varying levels of treatment or no treatment in the pre-EQIP period. The empirical strategy to identify the impact of EQIP on nutrient and sediment pollution levels is a linear panel fixed-effects model that controls for drought, recent precipitation, land use, gross farm income, and cash crop yield. This study found that a ten-thousand-dollar increase in EQIP cost share for water quality related conservation practices is estimated to lead to a 0.06 mg/l decrease in average ambient N levels. This estimated effect is equivalent to 40 percent of the average in-stream N concentration.

Graduation Semester

2024-08

Type of Resource

Thesis

Handle URL

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/125557

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2024 Hsin-Chieh Hsieh

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