Dec. 12, 2012 Meeting

NSF Economic Working Group: Meeting Minutes 12/6/12

 

 

Model Objectives and Inputs

 

Main objective function: Maximize producer and consumer surplus

 

Primary factors

• Land
• Labor
• Capital
• Water
  • Precipitation
  • Storage (in reservoirs and soil)
  • Snow melt

 

Transactions Transfers

• Cheese production
• Ethanol production
• Ag production
• Service activities (intermediate inputs)
• Imports/exports

 

Final Consumption

• Water Quantity
  • M&I demand
  • Ag demand
  • Environmental demand
  • Energy demand (fracking)
  • State compacts
  • Water quality
    • Could have a high and low quality categories demanded
    • Or, we could just make water quality a constraint

 

Possible Levels of Aggregation

• Model upper, middle and lower basin separately
• Model by zip code
• Model by ag district
• Model by 8 digit water district
• Model seasonality, seasons are likely to change
  • Monthly is the smallest time step that seems reasonable
  • Maybe early, late and winter

 

• We will begin the modeling process starting out with the whole basin and basic institutional constraints and then begin to disaggregate and add constraints.

 

Modeling Time

• Land classifications are going to change with population growth
• One possibility is to have two categories, public and private, and under private have land that is available for ag and land that is not. The public land will not be affected by population growth. Under the private land, only the land that is available for ag is the land that might change uses given population growth.

 

 

To do:

• Lit review of CGE models that include water and water sheds
  • Spatial and temporal disaggregation
  • Begin thinking about the main questions we want to answer