This report presents a review of economic studies for the United States and relates them to predicted impacts of climate change. The summary findings are organized by region and identify the key sectors likely affected by climate change, the main impacts to be expected, as well as estimates of costs. The report builds on the 2000 Global Change Research Program National Assessment, using additional regional and local studies, as well as new calculations derived from federal, state and industry data sources. From this review and quantification, five key lessons emerge:

1. Economic impacts of climate change will occurthroughout the country
2. Economic impacts will be unevenly distributedacross regions and within the economy andsociety.
3. Negative climate impacts will outweighbenefits for most sectors that provide essentialgoods and services to society.
4. Climate change impacts will place immensestrains on public sector budgets.
5. Secondary effects of climate impacts caninclude higher prices, reduced income and joblosses.

The contribution of nonmarket valuation studies to decisions about the operation of nonfederal hydroelectric facilities is examined. Hydropower licensing reforms by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to better weigh market and nonmarket tradeoffs did not require or use nonmarket valuation. License negotiation processes are interpreted as a substitute for valuation.

This article presents the results of a hedonic property value analysis for multiple hydropower sites along the Kennebec River in Maine, including the former site of the Edwards Dam in Augusta, Maine. The effect of the removal of the Edwards Dam on the Kennebec River in Maine is examined through consumer's marginal willingness to pay to be close to or distant from the dam site. Data from both before and after the dam was removed are used to estimate changes in marginal prices. A similar data set is also used to look at the effects of the remaining upstream dams on property values.
This article presents one of the first (to our knowledge) ex post analyses on the economic impact of dam removal on property values. As more privately owned dams in the United States come up for relicensing, evaluating the impacts with and without the dam will become increasingly important. This work can help inform those analyses.

This paper uses hedonic analysis to examine the impact of small dam removal on property values in south-central Wisconsin. Data on residential property sales wereobtained for three categories of sites: those where a small dam remains intact, thosewhere a small dam was removed, and those where a river or stream has been free flowing for at least 20 yr. The primary conclusions that emerge from the data arethat shoreline frontage along small impoundments confers no increase in residentialproperty value compared to frontage along free-flowing streams and that nonfrontage residential property located in the vicinity of a free-flowing stream is more valuablethan similar nonfrontage property in the vicinity of a small impoundment.

Changes in forest overstory lead to changes in runoff. This report estimates what such changes in runoff are worth to society using two sources of information: economicvaluation studies and, most importantly, water market transactions. Evidence from over2,000 transactions that occurred in the western U.S. over the past 14 years (1990 through 003) was examined to learn who is selling to whom and for what purpose, how muchwater is involved, and how much it is selling for. Roughly half of the transactions were sales of water rights; the rest were water leases. The transactions show that the price ofwater is highly variable both within and between western states, reflecting the localized nature of the factors that affect water prices. Ideally, if water market prices or valuationstudies are to be used to help determine the marginal value of water from specific areas, such as national forests, information from local markets or local studies should be used.Lacking site-specific value information, only rough estimates are possible.

Formulation of recovery plans for endangered salmon populations in the Columbia River Basin of North America is a complex, controversial resource-management issue. This report presents an integrated assessment model to analyze the biological-economic tradeoffs in recovery of Snake River spring/summer-run chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha).

The authors find that the removal of an estuarine predator, the Caspian tern (Sterna caspia), and elimination of adult salmon harvest are recovery measures that markedly increase long-term population-growth rates regardless of transport effectiveness. Dam breaching significantly increases growth rates under the best available estimate of transport effectiveness. The authors also conclude that recovery strategies in the cost-effective set depend on assumptions about transport effectiveness. Tern removal and harvest elimination are generally cost effective. At the best estimate of transport effectiveness, strategies that discontinue smolt transportation or breach dams are prevalent in the cost-effective set. In contrast, strategies that maximize transportation are prevalent in the cost-effective set if transport effectiveness is relatively high.

This paper links biology and economics through an integrated model thus providing a valuable tool for science-based policy and management.

The paper can be downloaded from Michael R. Moore's website at http://sitemaker.umich.edu/micmoore/working_papers

This US Fish and Wildlife Service filed a report with FERC on the economic value of refuge based recreation across the nation, on Dec 6, 2007. The main objective of the study was to estimate the national impact of refuges on their regional and local economies. This report studied 80 sample refuges (of a total of 548) and presented findings on:

1. Visitor Recreation-Related Expenditures

2. Economic Effects Associated With Refuge Visitation, and

3. Summary of Economic Effects of Refuge Visitation.

Summary findings:

1. In 2006, 34.8 million people visited wildlife refuges resulting in $1.7 billion in sales and $185 million in tax revenues.

2. Activities related to refuge visitation resulted in employment for 27,000 people

It concludes that recreational visits to national refuges generate substantial economic activity.

The report is available here.

The most important part of the evaluation process for the Corps is basing their decision on NED, the national economic development. The federal objective that the Corps engages on when dealing in water resource planning is to primarily decide upon a plan that contributes the greatest amount of benefits to national economic development, "...consistent with protecting the Nation's environment, pursuant to national environmental statutes, applicable executive orders, and other federal planning requirements." The Corps and the Federal government define contributions to NED as increases in the net value of the national output of goods and services, expressed in monetary units. The contributions to END include increases in those goods and services that both may be marketed and those that may not be marketed, i.e. natural resources.

Theories of agency behavior are tested via the empirical application of hydropower project relicensing by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). In the relicensing of each project, fish and wildlife afencies make formal recommendations to FERC on fish and wildlife protection at the project. FERC then enters a two-stage deliberation process during which it accepts; amends then accepts; or rejects each recommendation. We apply a count data model to explain the number of recommendations made per project and a bivariate probit model to explain FERC's disposition of the recommendations. The analysis covers 933 fish and wildlife recommendations made for 72 projects relicensed during 1980-96. Independent variables for the benefits and costs of the recommendations cannot be constructed because of FERC's deficient generation of economic information. A background section thus details the more serious limitations of FERC's application of economic analysis.
In explaining outcomes, a tension exists between the hierarchical control of Congress or the executive branch (the Progressive Reform model of agency behavior) and an agency's bureaucratic resistance to change (an evolutionary model of agency behavior). Key findings indicate that a new law (the Electric Consumers Protection Act of 1986) substantially altered FERC's fish and wildlife decisions, while a new administration (the Clinton administration, beginning 1993) exerted a mixed effect. Both events influenced the fish and wildlife agencies, as the number of recommendations made, per project, increased significantly at these junctures.