This project grant from the United States Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture's Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) program provides $649,697 to develop an integrated assessment model called Hydroecon to measure the social costs of nutrient pollution across the United States through 2026. The University of Massachusetts leads a team that includes Cornell University, Iowa State University, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison to integrate economic modules on impacts to housing values, recreation, drinking water treatment, human health, climate change, and ecosystem services into existing hydrological and agroecybernetic models. The new Hydroecon model will estimate spatially explicit and aggregate national damages from nutrient pollution and net benefits of key USDA conservation programs at the county and watershed level. Analysis will incorporate climate change impacts and variations based on socioeconomic factors. A web platform will display metrics on costs and benefits of USDA programs nationwide.
Generated 1/6/24, 9:34 PM