Agriculture is an important source of food, employment, and tax revenue to society. However, agricultural expansion is an important driver of global natural ecosystem degradation, including wetlands. Economic theory shows that wetland loss is caused by a mismatch between the private wetland conservation costs borne by landowners and the public benefits generated. We develop a spatially explicit wetland management model to estimate the private economic benefit of wetland drainage in an agricultural landscape in Alberta, Canada. We estimate a full wetland supply curve and show that the private economic benefits of wetland drainage are highly heterogeneous within a watershed. We then combine these private costs of wetland conservation with non-monetary measures of public ecosystem benefits to assess four wetland conservation policy targeting scenarios. We find a positive correlation between the opportunity cost of wetland conservation on private landowners and the amount of environmental benefits wetlands offer, suggesting that conserving the wetlands that impose the lowest opportunity cost may not be optimal targets for wetland conservation policy. We contribute to wetland conservation economics by demonstrating that targeted wetland conservation policies can be more effective than a uniform conservation policy that assumes wetlands within agricultural landscapes have the same costs and benefits.

中文翻译：

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加拿大农业景观中湿地保护成本的空间显式建模

农业是社会粮食、就业和税收的重要来源。然而，农业扩张是包括湿地在内的全球自然生态系统退化的重要驱动力。经济学理论表明，湿地损失是由土地所有者承担的私人湿地保护成本与所产生的公共利益不匹配造成的。我们开发了一个空间明确的湿地管理模型，以估计加拿大艾伯塔省农业景观中湿地排水的私人经济效益。我们估计了一条完整的湿地供应曲线，并表明湿地排水的私人经济效益在一个流域内是高度​​异质的。然后，我们将这些湿地保护的私人成本与公共生态系统效益的非货币措施相结合，以评估四种湿地保护政策目标情景。我们发现私人土地所有者保护湿地的机会成本与湿地提供的环境效益呈正相关，这表明保护机会成本最低的湿地可能不是湿地保护政策的最佳目标。我们通过证明有针对性的湿地保护政策比假设农业景观中的湿地具有相同的成本和收益的统一保护政策更有效，从而为湿地保护经济学做出贡献。我们发现私人土地所有者保护湿地的机会成本与湿地提供的环境效益呈正相关，这表明保护机会成本最低的湿地可能不是湿地保护政策的最佳目标。我们通过证明有针对性的湿地保护政策比假设农业景观中的湿地具有相同的成本和收益的统一保护政策更有效，从而为湿地保护经济学做出贡献。我们发现私人土地所有者保护湿地的机会成本与湿地提供的环境效益呈正相关，这表明保护机会成本最低的湿地可能不是湿地保护政策的最佳目标。我们通过证明有针对性的湿地保护政策比假设农业景观中的湿地具有相同的成本和收益的统一保护政策更有效，从而为湿地保护经济学做出贡献。