Effect of Agricultural Commodity Prices on Species Abundance of US Grassland Birds

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The expansion of row crop agriculture in the US is a major threat to grassland ecosystems and the biodiversity that they support. In this paper we developed an integrated econometric-ecological modeling framework that examines the impact of changing prices for agricultural commodities on grassland bird abundance in the Midwest United States. Our econometric model of land use change predicts changes in cropland acreage in response to land owner’s commodity price expectations. The ecological models predict changes in species abundance for twenty-two grassland birds in response to land use change. We demonstrate one application of our results by using parameter estimates from the models to simulate the effect of the 2006–2012 corn ethanol expansion on thirteen bird species of conservation concern. We found that a relatively inelastic total cropland acreage response to expected prices likely mitigated some of the ecological impact arising from increased demand for agricultural commodities. Furthermore, we found that impacts on species abundance are heterogeneous across different species and highly sensitive to model selection. Our findings emphasize the importance of using economically driven acreage expansion scenarios when estimating the environmental impacts of land use change.