Question

1. Assume that a national park has recently allowed people to drive all terrain vehicles on trails throughout the park. These vehicles create noise that scare the park’s wildlife lessening the quality of visits for other park enthusiasts.   You are asked to conduct a study to show the change in the park’s value.

a) What specific valuation method should you use?

b) How would you use that method?

c) What are some problems that might results from your use of that method?

2. In order to increase economic activity a city proposes to allow diesel powered delivery vehicles to operate in residential neighborhoods.   Diesel exhaust contains soot which is a major cause of asthma and other respiratory ailments leading to a decrease in the quality of life in these neighborhoods.   A neighborhood group opposed to this proposal hires you to conduct a valuation study to show the decrease in the quality of life.  

a) What specific valuation method should you use?

b) How would you use that method?

c) What are some problems that might results from your use of that method?

Answer 1

1)The National Park Service manages 84 million acres of land spread across 397 national parks, 40 national heritage areas, and 582 national natural landmarks, all of which are collectively termed “national parks” in this report. The Park Service has the most wilderness acreage of the major wilderness management agencies (the others are the Fish and Wildlife Service, the Bureau of Land Management, and the Forest Service).

a)Use millions of hours of acoustic recordings and sophisticated models to measure human-caused noise in protected areas. And you will find that noise pollution doubled sound energy in many U.S. protected areas, and that noise was encroaching into the furthest reaches of remote areas.

b)Human-caused noise has consequences for wildlife, entire ecosystems and people. It reduces the ability to hear natural sounds, which can mean the difference between life and death for many animals, and degrade the calming effect that we feel when we spend time in wild places.

c)Wilderness areas are managed to minimize human influence, so most noise sources come from outside their borders.

2)Air pollution is a global problem with negative health effects on the respiratory, cardiovascular and neurological systems.

There is robust evidence that the effects of air pollution span over the life course, with growing children being particularly vulnerable.

Diesel vehicles produce disproportionally more air pollution and should be a focus of exposure-mitigation policies.

a)Antenatal exposure
When considering effects measured in later childhood, it is difficult to separate the effect of maternal exposure to air pollution from postnatal effects—since there is a strong correlation between exposure to traffic-derived air pollutants (TRAPs) of pregnant women and their children. But independent associations between antenatal exposure to NO2 and reduced FEV1 later in childhood are reported. For example, Morales et al 24 reported that an IQR increase in NO2 exposure during the second trimester was associated with an estimated change in childhood FEV1 by −28 mL, while the relative risk of having FEV1 <80% predicted was 1.30.

c)By contrast, effects on the fetus or on the newborn infant must be due to maternal exposure. These epidemiological studies report that maternal exposure to TRAP has adverse effects on the fetus leading to increased infant mortality, reduced fetal growth, low birth weight at term and premature birth.25 26 Indeed, increased risk for the low birth weight for term metric is found at maternal PM2.5 exposure lower than the EU recommended annual limit of 25 µg/m3.26 27 It is likely that these antenatal effects synergise with postnatal pollution exposures to increase susceptibility to common respiratory conditions such as wheeze, bronchiolitis and asthma.