Three essays on environmental decision making under uncertainty

This dissertation is a compilation of three essays in environmental economics on the related issues of economics of environmental investments under uncertainty, adaptation to climate change, and information in environmental management. The unifying theme across the three essays is various aspects and dimensions of environmental decision-making under uncertainty. Wherever relevant, an attempt has been made at incorporating an explicit spatial treatment of the research problems.;The second essay looks at the issue of ecosystem adaptation to climate change under uncertainty. The essay highlights the importance of including climate change as a possible stressor in ecosystem management, as climate change could potentially alter the spatial distribution of the habitat sites. The uncertainty surrounding climate change and its impacts on habitat sites has important implications for optimality of investments in ecological projects. The essay uses the Submerged Aquatic Vegetation restoration program of the Chesapeake Bay as a case study to determine optimal investment decision-making in ecological restoration under climate change.;The third essay investigates the role of strategic information collection under uncertainty by examining the expected value of information in integrated sampling of the economy and the environment for nonpoint pollution management. In a first best world, environmental regulator sets different levels of the pollution control instrument for non-point polluters based on their productivity and pollution types, thereby minimizing the abatement costs of pollution. Information on the abatement costs of any pollution control policy is not available, oftentimes forcing regulators to select uniform control instruments. Uniform control instruments do not take into account the spatial heterogeneity across the landscape that creates differences in pollution and productivity types, and therefore do not minimize the abatement costs of pollution. Essay 3 tests and finds, in context of a Conestoga River watershed in Pennsylvania, that there is value of information in integrated sampling procedures of the environment and the economy. Information obtained from such integrated sampling procedures does help to create more efficient pollution control policies.;The first essay explores the issue of uncertainty and its implications for the design and timing of adaptation policies. The essay combines a literature review on the topic of uncertainty in environmental economics with a literature review of adaptation to climate change and synthesizes the findings to inform adaptation policy research under uncertainty. The optimal timing of investments in adaptation measure to climate change is part of effective policy design, but has been largely neglected in the literature. The presence of uncertainty, irreversibility, and adjustment costs that characterize adaptation problem complicates the analysis of optimal timing of adaptation measures. The essay examines how these and other elements impact timing decisions of adaptation measures and explores conditions under which earlier investment in adaptation is justified.