Cost-effectiveness of erosion mitigation to meet water clarity targets in the Manawatū-Whanganui Region of New Zealand.

Soil erosion is a significant environmental issue worldwide. It affects water quality, biodiversity, and land productivity. New Zealand government agencies and regional councils work to mitigate soil erosion through policies, management programmes, and funding for soil conservation projects.

Rethinking urban park irrigation under climate change.

Climate change is forcing cities to reassess their water management practices, particularly for water-intensive applications like park irrigation. If water scarcity requires governments to deviate from current park management norms and allocate less water towards parks, it is essential that park managers design spaces that maintain community wellbeing. We apply the hedonic pricing method and use detailed park management information to assess the value of parks in a region where local climatic conditions require extensive irrigation to keep turf green, and where climate change is further constraining water supplies.

Valuing the improvement of a decommissioned heritage site to a multifunctional water sensitive greenspace.

In this paper, we assess residents' preferences for different options of large-scale water sensitive urban improvement of a heritage site in Melbourne, the Main Outfall Sewer (MOS) reserve. We use a hedonic pricing analysis and a discrete choice experiment to understand the benefits associated with improving the MOS reserve. We find that there are significant non-market benefits associated with various options, both in terms of the potential to reflect increases in house value and in terms of people's willingness to pay for improvements in amenity and environmental quality.

How economics can further the success of ecological restoration.

Restoration scientists and practitioners have recently begun to include economic and social aspects in the design and investment decisions for restoration projects. With few exceptions, ecological restoration studies that include economics focus solely on evaluating costs of restoration projects. However, economic principles, tools, and instruments can be applied to a range of other factors that affect project success.

A multidisciplinary conceptualization of conservation opportunity.

An opportunity represents an advantageous combination of circumstances that allows goals to be achieved. We reviewed the nature of opportunity and how it manifests in different subsystems (e.g.