Wallace E. Oates Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award

Abstract

: Land policy has major implications for human health and economic development via its in fl uence on outcomes like water pollution, food security, real estate development, and climate change. My research focuses on land use policy in the context of public good provision, valuation of externalities and ecosystem services, and estimating regulatory costs and bene fi ts — often utiliz-ing satellite products to fi ll data gaps to help answer policy-relevant questions. The fi rst chapter of my dissertation investigates the impact of pesticides on human health and welfare using cicada emergence as an ecologically-driven natural experiment to explore the social cost of pesticides use in agriculture. The second chapter analyzes the relationship between irrigation and climate change, showing how adaptive measures can create negative externalities like aquifer drawdown and salinization. The third chapter provides an estimate of the value of wetlands for fl ood mitigation, an important topic in relation to the Clean Water Act and future climate change. Overall, these chapters explore both how humans affect the land and the reverse feedback of how land use decisions affect human welfare.