Economic and environmental implications of alternative landscape designs in the Walnut Creek Watershed of Iowa

This paper evaluates the economic and environmental impacts of three altern ative landscape scenarios created by a team of landscape architects, follow ing input from an interdisciplinary team of researchers. In the first scena rio, the main objective was to increase production and profitability of com mercial agriculture with environmental objectives given secondary weight. I n the second scenario, water quality improvements were the main objective w ith secondary objectives being financial health of the agricultural sector and maintenance and restoration of biodiversity. In the third scenario, mai ntenance and restoration of native biodiversity was the main objective with secondary weight given to the financial health of the agricultural sector and water quality. We evaluate the degree to which the economic and environ mental objectives can be achieved together or involve tradeoffs. We found t hat some changes in land use or agricultural practices result in environmen tal improvements on certain dimensions in addition to making economic sense . But most changes in land use or agricultural practice do not bring unifor m environmental improvement. There may be difficult tradeoffs between diffe rent components of environmental quality in addition to tradeoffs between e conomic and environmental objectives. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All ri ghts reserved.