An economic framework for forecasting land-use and ecosystem change

This paper develops a joint econometric-simulation framework to forecast detailed empirical distributions of the spatial pattern of land-use and ecosystem change. In-sample and out-of-sample forecasting tests are used to examine the performance of the parcel-scale econometric and simulation models, and the importance of multiple forecasting challenges is assessed. The econometric-simulation method is integrated with an ecological model to generate forecasts of the probability of localized extinctions of an amphibian species. The paper demonstrates the potential of integrating economic and ecological models to generate ecological forecasts in the presence of alternative market conditions and land-use policy constraints. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.