A study finds that a model trained on 6 million land sales generated a high-resolution map of fair market value estimates for private lands in the contiguous United States; such a map can help estimate the cost of conservation, including floodplain protection and species conservation, with up to 8.5 times greater accuracy than previous proxies, and the study also suggests that conservation policy budgets may have been underestimated by factors of up to 37.5 and that accurate cost accounting can help target ecosystem service investments.
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Article #20-12865: "High-resolution land value maps reveal underestimation of conservation costs in the United States," by Christoph Nolte.
MEDIA CONTACT:
Christoph Nolte
Boston University, MA
tel: 734-747-0305
e-mail: <chrnolte@bu.edu>