| dc.description.abstract | Climate change, biofuels, agricultural policies and other factors may well be changing farmer decisions and extreme events like wildfires. We use discrete choice models to examine how climate is influencing decisions on crop mix and land use choice along with natural wildfire incidence. Using panel data, we consider the effect of climate change across space on the censored choice of both major land uses and agricultural crop mix plus on the probability of wildfire.
In terms of land use and crop mix, we use a two-step linearized spatial logit model to portray major land use transitions and a fractional dependent variable model to examine crop mix selection. The models include socioeconomic, environmental, and spatial factors. Our results indicate that climate significantly affects land use transitions and crop mix allocations. These results indicate that farm level adaptation to climate change is ongoing in a spatially heterogeneous manner. Generally crops are moving north and west plus up in elevation while climate change causes crop land to transition into grassland.
For wildfire, we examine how wildfire risk is affected by climate and other factors using a fractional regression considering state unobserved factors. We examine risks of both human and naturally caused wildfires. We explore the importance of factors such as climate, demographics, and physical characteristics on fire risks. We find that climate conditions play a significant role in determining wildfire risks in the US but have regionally heterogeneous effects on human and naturally caused fires. This implies each caused fire can be better dealt with by using separate approaches. | en |
