Download or read book Potential Economic Effects of a Zero Depletion Policy for the Ogallala Aquifer in Northwest Kansas written by Orlan Buller and published by . This book was released on 1991 with total page 21 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Future of the Southern Plains written by Sherry Lynn Smith and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Seven historians, one geographer, and a paleoclimatologist contribute a wealth of observation, analysis, and commentary on the environmental characteristics and history of the Southern Plains. They address such themes as failing communities, scarce water, endangered species, and disappearing ways of life - and the possible results of these developments not only in the Southern Plains but elsewhere on the globe."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book Economic Impact of Zero Depletion and Acre inch Restrictions on Irrigated Crop Production and Income in Northwest Kansas written by Orlan H. Buller and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 55 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Ogallala written by John Opie and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2000-01-01 with total page 508 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this new, enlarged edition, John Opie updates his groundbreaking work on the environmental history of the Ogallala aquifer and plains farming. He addresses the impact of the 1996 Farm Bill (Federal Agricultural Improvement and Reform Act) and looks at the recent movement of industrial hog farming onto the plains. Opie also develops his argument for the plains as a ?moral geography,? a view involving the recognition by society that it has an obligation to balance the responsibility for conserving natural resources with that for keeping a regional people?the family farmers?in operation.
Download or read book Economic Impacts of Selected Water Conservation Policies in the Ogallala Aquifer written by Stephen Harold Amosson and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 50 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Staff Paper written by and published by . This book was released on 1991 with total page 612 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Potential Economic Impact of Water Use Changes in Northwest Kansas written by Bill B. Golden and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 71 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Effects of High Commodity Prices on Western Kansas Crop Patterns and the Ogallala Aquifer written by Matthew Ken Clark and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The expansion of the biofuels industry, world demand, and various other factors are having a historic impact on the price of grains. These high prices have been creating a large increase in production of many water intensive crops such as corn. As corn is among the most input-intensive crops, this extra production has raised concerns about environmental impacts and pressures on water resources in particular. While water quality has been a longstanding concern in the cornbelt, much of the new production is in nontraditional corn regions including the southeast, the High Plains, and the western states. In these areas, there is mounting concern over depletion of already stressed water supplies. In the High Plains, the chief water source is the Ogallala aquifer, one of the largest water resources in the world that underlies eight states from South Dakota to Texas. The Ogallala has enabled many agricultural industries, such as irrigated crops, cattle feeding, and meat processing, to establish themselves in areas that would not be possible otherwise. A consequence is that the economy of this region has become dependent on groundwater availability. Continued overdrafts of the aquifer have caused a long-term drop in water levels and some areas have now reached effective depletion. This thesis seeks to estimate the impact of the rising commodity prices on groundwater consumption and cropping patterns in the Kansas portion of the Ogallala. The economy of this region is particularly dependent on water and irrigated crops, with more than 3 million head of feeder cattle and irrigated crop revenues exceeding $600 million annually. Sheridan (northwestern Kansas), Seward (southwestern Kansas), and Scott (west central Kansas) counties have been selected as representative case study regions. These counties have a wide range of aquifer levels with Seward having an abundant supply, Sheridan an intermediate supply, and Scott nearing effective depletion. Cropping patterns in these counties are typical of the western Kansas region, with most irrigated acreage being planted to corn and with dominant nonirrigated rotations of wheat-fallow and wheat-sorghum-fallow. A Positive Mathematical Programming (PMP) model was developed and calibrated to land- and water-use data in the case counties for a base period of 1999-2003. The PMP approach produces a constrained nonlinear optimization model that mimics the land- and water- allocation decision facing producers each year. The choice variables in the model are the acreages planted to each of the major crops and the water use by crop. The model was run for each of the case counties. The PMP calibration procedure ensures that the model solutions fall within a small tolerance of the base period observations. Once calibrated, the models were executed to simulate the impacts of the emerging energy demand for crops over a 60-year period. After the baseline projections were found, the model was then run under increased crop prices that reflect the higher prices observed in 2006 and after. The thesis found that under the high price scenario, both irrigated crop production and water application per acre increased significantly during the early years of the simulated period in all modeled counties. The size of the increases depended on the amount of original water available in each county. The increases generally diminished in magnitude toward the end of the simulation period, but led to smaller ending levels of saturated thickness as compared to the base price in all counties. Finally, in two of the three counties, it was observed that initial increases in irrigated crop acres and water application forces a decline in the aquifer such that less water can be applied per acre in the final years of the simulation. This suggests that high commodity prices forces a higher emphasis on early production levels than later production levels. Additionally, the higher prices have a significant effect on the rate of decline of the Ogallala aquifer.
Download or read book Western Water Resources written by Of Kansas City and published by Westview Press. This book was released on 1980-07-21 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Depletion of the Ogallala Aquifer Water Reserves in Western Kansas written by Kurt W. Davis and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Agricultural Research in Kansas written by Kansas Agricultural Experiment Station and published by . This book was released on 1990 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Essays on Optimal Extraction of Groundwater in Western Kansas written by Nicolas Efrain Quintana Ashwell and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The two studies presented in this dissertation examine incentives for groundwater extraction and their resulting effect on aquifer depletion. Both studies apply dynamic optimization methods in a context of irrigated agriculture in arid and semi-arid regions such as in western Kansas. The first study examines the effects of capital subsidies aimed at increasing irrigation application efficiency. The second study examines the effects of changing incentives posed by changes in climatic patterns and by technical progress in the form of increasing crop water productivity. Both studies have significant policy and groundwater management implications. Subsidies for the adoption of (more) efficient irrigation technologies are commonly proposed and enacted with the goal of achieving water conservation. These subsidies are more politically feasible than water taxes or water use restrictions. The reasoning behind this type of policy is that increased application efficiency makes it possible to sustain a given level of crop production per acre with lower levels of groundwater pumping, all else equal. Previous literature argues that adoption of more efficient irrigation systems may not reduce groundwater extraction. Rewarding the acquisition of more efficient --and capital intensive-- irrigation equipment affects the incentives farmers have to pump groundwater. For instance, the farmer may choose to produce more valuable and water intensive crops or to expand the irrigated acreage after adopting the more efficient irrigation system. Hence, the actual impact of the policy on overall groundwater extraction and related aquifer depletion is unclear. The first chapter examines the effects of such irrigation technology subsidies using a model of inter-temporal common pool groundwater use with substitutable technology and declining well-yields from groundwater stocks, where pumping cost and stock externalities arise from the common property problem. An optimal control analytical model is developed and simulated with parameters from Sheridan County, Kansas--a representative region overlying the Ogallala aquifer. The study contrasts competitive and optimal allocations and accounts for endogenous and time-varying irrigation capital on water use and groundwater stock. The analysis is the first to account for the labor savings from improved irrigation technologies. The results show that in the absence of policy intervention, the competitive solution yields an early period with underinvestment in efficiency-improving irrigation technology relative to the socially efficient solution, followed by a period of over-investment. This suggests a potential role for irrigation capital subsidies to improve welfare over certain ranges of the state variables. In contrast to previous work, the findings are evidence that significant returns may be achieved from irrigation capital subsidies. Finally, a policy scenario is simulated where an irrigation technology subsidy is implemented to explore whether such a program can capture significant portions of the potential welfare gain. Results indicate that the technology subsidy can improve welfare, but it captures a relatively small portion of the potential gains in welfare. The second chapter presents a dynamic model of groundwater extraction for irrigation where climate change and technical progress are included as exogenous state variables-- in addition to the usual state variable of the stock of groundwater. The key contributions of this study are (i) an intuitive description of the conditions under which groundwater extraction can be non-monotonic, (ii) a numerical demonstration that extraction is non-monotonic in an important region overlying the Ogallala Aquifer, and (iii) the predicted gains from management are substantially larger after accounting for climate and technical change. Intuitively, optimal extraction is increasing in early periods when the marginal benefits of extraction are increasing sufficiently fast due to climate and technical change compared to the increase in the marginal cost of extraction. In contrast, most previous studies include the stock of groundwater as the only state variable and, consequently, recommend a monotonically decreasing extraction path. In this study, the numerical simulations for a region in Kansas overlying the Ogallala Aquifer indicate that optimal groundwater extraction peaks 23 years in the future and the gains from management are large (29.5%). Consistent with previous literature, the predicted gains from management are relatively small (6.1%) when ignoring climate and technical change. The realized gains from management are not substantially impacted by incorrect assumptions of climate and technical change when formulating the optimal plan.
Download or read book An Economic Impact Analysis of a Proposed Local Enhanced Management Area for Groundwater Management District 4 written by Kellen Liebsch and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While Kansas, and specifically western Kansas, are known by many to be the backbone of agriculture in our nation, much of that productivity has been built on the heels of the invention and efficiency of irrigation technology. Unfortunately, recharge and replenishment of the High Plains - Ogallala Aquifer has not kept pace with the demands of agricultural production, and current indications state that without the implementation of conservation or management practices that the aquifer in Kansas could be depleted by 2060 (Steward, et al. 2013). The producers of Kansas are committed to long-term solutions to preserve their way of life, espouse their commitment to natural resources and the environment, and ensure the viability of their operations for years to come. This study analyzed the economic impact of a proposed Local Enhanced Management Area (LEMA) for Groundwater Management District (GMD) #4. While there currently is a LEMA in a portion of GMD #4 known as the Sheridan 6 LEMA, the board of GMD #4 has initiated the process to institute a district-wide LEMA that would affect a large portion of the 10-county area of the groundwater management district (Cheyenne, Rawlins, Decatur, Sherman, Thomas, Sheridan, Graham, Wallace, Logan, and Gove Counties). To complete the analysis for the proposed policy change, multiple scenarios were derived using the IMPLAN software. The first model serves as the baseline scenario and provides status quo information on the current irrigated cropping economics of GMD #4. The second scenario assumes that a district-wide LEMA would require a 25% reduction in groundwater use, compared to current irrigation practices. To achieve this reduction in groundwater use, irrigated acreage was reduced by 25% and transitioned to dryland production. For the third and final scenario, an optimal irrigated crop-mix ratio is determined based on the current shift in production as reported by the producers in the Sheridan 6 LEMA. While this scenario does not reduce irrigated acres, it shows the economic gains that can be captured by using less water-intensive crops as part of the crop-mix ratio. The reduction in irrigation is also imbedded in that the acreage in which production is shifted away from is more water intensive towards acreage that is less water-intensive. Due to a reduction in groundwater use for irrigation, the study determined that there is a negative economic impact in relation to employment and total output in the GMD #4 area. There are 173 less individuals employed from the 25% reduction in groundwater use. Additionally, direct output is reduced by $44.6 million and total output is reduced by $60.0 million. This equates to a $194.49 reduction per acre on a per-acre basis. The study further showed that the economic impact could be lessened by the use of a crop-mix shift as evidenced in the current Sheridan 6 LEMA. The assessment of a crop-mix shift decreased the loss of direct output by $12.0 million to $265.0 million and total output by $16.5 million to $357.1 million. On a per-acre basis, this is a reduction of $140.97, or mitigation of $53.52 in loss per acre due to the use of an optimal crop-mix shift. While agricultural production is highly dependent on many factors, it can be universally agreed that the landscape of agriculture would be different if water was not an available resource. It is the hope that this research will provide a starting point for the producers of GMD #4 to have a conversation about the economic costs associated with the implementation of a LEMA, as well as discuss other options and opportunities to make educated, well-informed decisions that are impactful both now and for generations to come.
Download or read book Report written by Kansas Agriculture Ogallala Task Force and published by . This book was released on 1993 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Assessment of Water Level Decline Rates Within the Ogallala Aquifer Kansas written by Kansas Water Office and published by . This book was released on 2003* with total page 9 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By 2010, reduce water level decline rates within the Ogallala Aquifer and implement enhanced water management in targeted areas. ... The above objective is included in the Water Right Management Policy Section of the FY 2003 Kansas Water Plan.
Download or read book Report of the Kansas Agriculture Ogallala Task Force written by Kansas Agriculture Ogallala Task Force and published by . This book was released on 1993 with total page 108 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Discussion and Recommendations for Long Term Management of the Ogallala Aquifer in Kansas written by Kansas Water Authority. Ogallala Aquifer Management Advisory Committee and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 23 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
