A general framework for estimating the benefits of moderate resolution land imagery in environmental applications: a case study in nonpoint source pollution of groundwater resources

Moderate resolution land imagery (MRLI) is crucial to a more complete assessment of the cumulative landscape-level effect of agricultural land use and land cover on environmental quality. If this improved assessment yields a net social benefit, then that benefit reflects the value of information (VOI) from MRLI. Environmental quality and the capacity to provide environmental services evolve because of human actions, changing natural conditions, and their interaction with natural physical processes. The human actions, in turn, are constrained and redirected by many institutions and regulations such as agriculture, energy, and environmental policies. A general framework for bringing together relevant processes (i.e. sociologic, biologic, physical, hydrologic, and geologic) at meaningful scales to interpret environmental implications of MRLI applications is presented. We set out a specific application using MRLI observations to identify crop planting and thus estimate surface management activities over a regional landscape that influence groundwater resources. We tailor the application to the characteristics of nonpoint source groundwater pollution hazards in Iowa to illustrate the general framework in a land usehydrologic-economic system. In the example, MRLI VOI derives from both reducing losses to agricultural production and reducing mitigation and treatment costs necessary to avoid human health and other consequences of contaminated groundwater.