Two major factors that determine the efficiency of programs designed to mitigate greenhouse gases by encouraging voluntary changes in U.S. agricultural land management are the effect of land use changes on producers’ profitability and the net sequestration those changes create. In this work, we investigate how the interaction of these factors produces spatial heterogeneity in the cost-efficiency of voluntary programs incentivizing tillage reduction and cover-cropping practices. We map county-level predicted rates of adoption for each practice with the greenhouse gas mitigation or carbon sequestration benefits expected from their use. Then, we use these bivariate maps to describe how the cost efficiency of agricultural mitigation efforts is likely to vary spatially in the United States. Our results suggest the combination of high adoption rates and large reductions in net emissions make reduced tillage programs most cost efficient in the Chesapeake Bay watershed or the Upper Mississippi and Lower Missouri sub-basins of the Mississippi River. For programs aiming to reduce net emissions by incentivizing cover-cropping, we expect cost-efficiency to be greatest in the areas near the main stem of the Mississippi River within its Middle and Lower sections. Many voluntary agricultural conservation programs offer the same incentives across the United States. Yet spatial variation in profitability and efficacy of conservation practices suggest that these uniform approaches are not cost-effective. Spatial targeting of voluntary agricultural conservation programs has the potential to increase the cost-efficiency of these programs due to regional heterogeneity in the profitability and greenhouse gas mitigation benefits of agricultural land management practices across the continental United States. We illustrate how predicted rates of adoption and greenhouse gas sequestration might be used to target regions where efforts to incentivize cover-cropping and reductions in tillage are most likely to be cost -effective.

中文翻译：

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预测美国农业温室气体减排计划成本效率的空间变化

通过鼓励自愿改变美国农业土地管理来减少温室气体排放的计划的效率决定了两个主要因素，即土地利用变化对生产者盈利能力的影响以及这些变化所产生的净固存。在这项工作中，我们研究了这些因素的相互作用如何在激励减少耕作和覆盖作物实践的自愿计划的成本效率中产生空间异质性。我们绘制了每种做法的县级预测采用率及其使用所带来的温室气体减排或碳封存效益。然后，我们使用这些双变量地图来描述美国农业缓解努力的成本效率可能如何在空间上变化。我们的结果表明，高采用率和净排放量的大幅减少相结合，使得减少耕作计划在切萨皮克湾流域或密西西比河的密西西比河上游和密苏里河下游子流域最具成本效益。对于旨在通过激励覆盖作物减少净排放的计划，我们预计密西西比河中下游干流附近地区的成本效益最高。美国各地的许多自愿农业保护计划都提供相同的激励措施。然而，保护实践的盈利能力和功效的空间差异表明，这些统一的方法并不具有成本效益。由于美国大陆农业土地管理实践的盈利能力和温室气体减排效益存在区域异质性，自愿农业保护计划的空间目标有可能提高这些计划的成本效率。我们说明了如何利用预测的采用率和温室气体封存率来瞄准那些最有可能具有成本效益的激励覆盖作物和减少耕作的地区。