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The Value of Wetlands Versus Open Water in Louisiana

The Value of Wetlands Versus Open Water in Louisiana. Walter R. Keithly, Jr. Baifu Xu John Barras Richard F. Kazmierczak, Jr. Land Loss of Coastal Louisiana. “America’s Wetlands”, about 30% of the Lower 48 states’ coastal wetland; 20% of wetlands lost in the past 100 years;

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The Value of Wetlands Versus Open Water in Louisiana

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  1. The Value of Wetlands VersusOpen Water in Louisiana Walter R. Keithly, Jr. Baifu Xu John Barras Richard F. Kazmierczak, Jr.

  2. Land Loss of Coastal Louisiana • “America’s Wetlands”, about 30% of the Lower 48 states’ coastal wetland; • 20% of wetlands lost in the past 100 years; • Catastrophic loss rate: 25-35 square miles a year; • 90% of the continental US coastal marsh loss; • Hurricane Katrina caused southeastern Louisiana over $90 billion in physical losses and Hurricane Rita caused the southwest coastal area of Louisiana over $5 billion, and unexpected wetland loss.

  3. Wetlands Restoration Measures • 129 federal and state restoration projects; • Less than 10% of the minimum funding needed for restoration; • 80 percent of all coastal Louisiana wetlands are privately owned.

  4. Objectives • To identify the factors influencing the value of coastal wetland properties in southwestern Louisiana; • To examine the influence of open water and wetland types on private market property values; • To estimate implicit prices associated with underlying wetland characteristics.

  5. Steps for Hedonic Model • Gather property transfers and price; • Collect explanatory variables; • Property characteristics (e.g., wetland type) • Structural characteristics (e.g., acreage, distance from coast) • Establish the relationship between price and explanatory variables.

  6. Study Area

  7. How Did We Digitalize a Privately Owned Property? • Bill of Sales (Transfers); • Township Map: locate township, range, and section; • Scanned Topographic Maps; • Draw property polygons using ArcGIS.

  8. Example of One Individual Property

  9. Property Polygons - Digitalizing

  10. Symbols and Descriptive Statistics

  11. General Hedonic Model

  12. Specific Model • Ln(Price/acre)=

  13. Hedonic Price FunctionR2: 0.7110, Adjusted R2: 0.6763

  14. Discussion/Key Findings • An increase of fresh marshes relative to open water enhances the price per acre, ceteris paribus; • An increase in intermediate marsh and/or brackish & saline marsh relative to open water decreases the price per acre, ceteris paribus; • Other significant positive influences include: interest in property and year; • Other significant negative influences include: total acres and higher expected erosion rate;

  15. Thanks!

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