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Invasive conifers have the potential to substantially alter natural, cultural, and heritage landscapes in many regions. While much work has been done to understand the impacts of biological invasions on ecosystem services such as water regulation and carbon sequestration, less is known about their impact on sites that have significant cultural value. Assessing these values is complicated by the fact that biological invasions are novel in nature. People are unlikely to have experience with the scales and types of change that concern researchers, meaning that it can be difficult to assess how these changes may impact both the way that people value places and also the specific sites that people value. We assess cultural values in the context of wilding conifers in three landscapes in New Zealand. We mix interview and survey data with scientific projections and visualisation tools based on spatial analysis to explore the interactions between the information that people have about invasives and the impacts that they have on cultural values. We find that concern about wilding conifers increases significantly when people are presented with visual, scientifically credible, projections of incursion. This change demonstrates the importance of communicating credible scenarios for biological invasions when considering how they might affect people’s cultural values.

This paper investigates the implications of policy on farm income, land use, and the environment when New Zealand landowners face multiple environmental constraints. It also looks at the interaction between climate and nutrient reduction policy and the extent to which one policy can be used to meet the other’s objectives. We use a non-linear, partial equilibrium mathematical programming model of New Zealand land use to assess the economic impacts of climate and water policies at the New Zealand territorial authority level. The spatially explicit agro-environmental economic model estimates changes in land use, agricultural output, land management, and environmental impacts. The policies investigated include a range of carbon prices on land-based emissions ($0–30/tCO $$_{2\mathrm{e}}$$ ) as well a range of prices on nitrogen leaching from diffuse sources ($0–30/kgN). We estimate that implementing stand-alone greenhouse gas and nutrient emissions reduction policies for the agricultural and forestry sectors will create environmental benefits outside the scope of the policy. However, not all environmental outputs improve, and net farm revenue declines by between 0 and 11%. Simultaneously implementing the two policies results in the desired goals of reductions in nitrogen and greenhouse gas emissions with a marginal economic burden on landowners (i.e. 1–2% additional loss in farm profit relative to a stand-alone policy).

Non-point source pollution is deteriorating water quality throughout the world. New Zealand is addressing this issue by regulating land-based nutrient losses, with debates over how to allocate limits across a heterogeneous landscape. We develop a spatially explicit economic land use model to investigate efficiency and equity issues from seven approaches to allocate nutrient discharges across two New Zealand watersheds. We find that the preferred allocation differs across land use, land characteristics, and regulation stringency; and that there is no universal ‘best’ allocation option. Therefore, decision-makers should focus on, at least, efficiency and equity, and on how to compensate those most affected.

A recent paper by Doole and Marsh (2013), questioned the validity of using the New Zealand Forest and Agriculture Regional Model (NZFARM) for New Zealand agri-environmental policy analysis. We respond to their critique by clearly describing the model structure, explaining the NZFARM parameterisation, calibration, and validation procedure, and presenting estimates from a series of nutrient reduction policy scenarios to highlight the utility of the model. In doing so, we demonstrate that NZFARM generates logical and intuitive results that can be used for robust agri-environmental policy decision-making.

This study examines the impact of flood-hazard zone location on residential property prices. The study utilises data from over 2000 private residential property sales occurred during 2006 in North Shore City, New Zealand. A spatial autoregressive hedonic model is developed to provide efficient estimates of the marginal effect of flood prone risks on property prices. Results suggest that the sale price of a residential property within a flood prone area is lower than an equivalent property outside the flood prone area. The flood plain location discount is reduced by the release of public information regarding flood risk.

Inherent characteristics of soil and land valuation data are used to examine the relationship between soil characteristics and rural farmland values to value soil natural capital in the 6000 km2 Manawatu catchment in New Zealand. The study applies a widely used economic valuation method to determine whether the value of inherent characteristics of soils is reflected in land values. We find empirical evidence that the characteristics used to describe soil natural capital stock, e.g. gravel class, drainage class, potential rooting depth, and profile available water, are reflected in rural land values. Moreover, we find that these characteristics of soil stocks do not behave simply as independent variables but that there are complex relationships between them influencing their value.