Quantitative analysis for open space proposals: an environmental perspective

The shortage of prime land in the United States has caused competition to stiffen over the right to use still undeveloped areas. Land developers, because of their abilities to show in dollars and cents the benefits to be gained from development projects, have continually been awarded land use rights over the objections of naturalists and others who wish to preserve the land in its natural state. Conservationists cannot present sound economic arguments and must resort to highly subjective statements about possible damage to the quality of the environment. What they lack are briefs couched in quantitative terms so that they may compete on an equal basis with the developers. This thesis undertakes the challenge to quantify formerly intangible benefits of land preservation. Using The Nature Conservancy, a conservationist group interested in the natural value of land, as a medium to demonstrate methods which quantify the esthetic and ecological import of land, this paper presents a linear programming model which optimally allocates capital to buy up land sites of high natural value.