No abstract

High-quality water resources provide a wide range of benefits, but the value of water quality is often not fully represented in environmental policy decisions, due in large part to an absence of water quality valuation estimates at large, policy relevant scales. Using data on property values with nationwide coverage across the contiguous United States, we estimate the benefits of lake water quality as measured through capitalization in housing markets. We find compelling evidence that homeowners place a premium on improved water quality. This premium is largest for lakefront property and decays with distance from the waterbody. In aggregate, we estimate that 10% improvement of water quality for the contiguous United States has a value of $6 to 9 billion to property owners. This study provides credible evidence for policymakers to incorporate lake water quality value estimates in environmental decision-making.

Fallen snow is one of the most reflective surfaces found in nature. As a result, snowbanks can take many weeks to melt even when the air temperature is above freezing. Here, we introduce a simple and passive method for quickly melting snowbanks by draping a thermally absorptive blanket over the snow. Using controlled experimental conditions, it was observed that snowbanks can melt 300% faster when a thermally absorptive blanket is placed on top. The mechanism is the threefold increase in absorptivity of the spray-coated blanket compared to bare snow, which allows the vast majority of the irradiation to be used to overcome the latent heat of fusion.

Hedonic price models are commonly used to estimate implicit prices for lake water quality across small geographic regions that might be assumed to be a part of a common real estate market. Yet recent studies expand the geographic scale of the hedonic model potentially obscuring important differences in implicit prices across markets. We estimate implicit prices for lake water quality across multiple states in the northeast and upper Midwest in the United States of America at three different geographic scales: substate, state, and multistate. We find implicit price estimates are heterogeneous at both the substate and state-levels, which is not accounted for in state-level or multistate hedonic models. Our results show that estimates across a broad geographic scale can be driven by a single subregion within the defined area. Overall, the study demonstrates that using a single hedonic model over a large geographic area may obscure important heterogeneity in implicit prices used to estimate potential benefits for water-quality improvements.