The intertemporal impact of soil erosion on non-uniform soil profiles: A new direction in analyzing erosion impacts

Abstract

Soil erosion studies by economists have utilized relatively simple yield response functions compared to productivity simulation models used by soil scientists in order to endogenously solve for optimal management schemes. This paper combines the optimization techniques of previous economic studies with a more complex measure of soil productivity than simply soil depth which has been used previously. An illustrative model demonstrates how erosion affects different types of soil profiles found in the United States and isolates three different ways that erosion can impact productivity. Estimation procedures that do not account for the non-uniform nature of soil profiles can misstate the impact of soil erosion on cropland productivity. The framework, though perhaps overly simplified for direct use, disentangles the impacts of soil erosion into substitution, mixing and depth effects and suggests how varied profiles should be managed in different ways according to how each is impacted by erosion.