Dynamics of agricultural commodity production and consumption: Implications for invasive species management

Invasive species (IS) pose a threat not only to the natural environment, but also to agriculture and human health. In terms of natural resources, IS are considered to be second only to habitat loss in terms of risk of species extinction. The degree of globalization and market integration are increasing rapidly. Accompanying the benefits of trade liberalization and specialization is the increasing risk of the introduction of invasive species. Faced with the possible introduction of an invasive species, government agencies that are that are charged with providing bio-security have to make decisions that have great uncertainties with regard to both the possible economic consequences of a successful establishment and the probability of establishment of IS. One characteristic of agricultural production that makes evaluating economic impacts particularly difficult is that production process is constrained by the biological life cycle of different species. In this dissertation, I developed dynamic partial equilibrium bioeconomic models that integrate population dynamics with invasive species dissemination dynamics to study the impacts of invasive species introduction and alternative prevention/mitigation strategies.