An Environmental and Economic Systems Analysis of Land Use Decisions in the Massachusetts Cranberry Industry

This project uses a systems approach to explore environmental and economic trade-offs and synergies connected to land use decisions in the Massachusetts cranberry industry. Building upon ongoing research on the science of cranberry bog restoration, this work integrates socioeconomic data with environmental impact modeling, and presents the results in a web-based decision-support tool that allows stakeholders to interact with and explore the impacts of different land use scenarios.

This work was conducted as part of Caroline Jaffe's Ph.D. dissertation research at the MIT Media Lab, with significant contributions from Maria Alder, Julian Manyika, Erika Pilpre, and Jamie Geng. This work builds on restoration research conducted by members of Living Observatory, as well as two ongoing projects at the MIT Media Lab: the Tidmarsh sensor network installation from the Responsive Environments group, and the EVDT integrated modeling framework from the Space Enabled Group. As of 2023, this project is no longer active. Please contact the authors if you are interested in building upon this work.

Overview

Cranberry farming is economically, culturally, and historically important in Southeastern Massachusetts, but today faces compounding challenges that make it increasingly difficult for farms to stay profitable: heightened competition from Midwestern farms using modern farming techniques and hybrid cranberry cultivars, fluctuating cranberry prices, an aging farmer population, and uncertain growing conditions due to a changing climate.

These factors have led many farmers to consider new options for their farmland including undergoing farm renovations to improve efficiency, planting newer and more robust cranberry varietals, or diversifying their income streams with solar panel installation or alternative crops. Other farmers, looking to exit the farming industry entirely, have several options: selling their land to developers, or partnering with local municipalities and conservation organizations to restore their farmland to its native wetland state. All these options present social, economic, and environmental trade-offs. Fundamentally, however, growers need to make a sustainable living, provide for their families, and recoup their investment in land.

Many cranberry farms in Massachusetts were built on top of wetlands over a century ago. This ecological history is of particular interest due to the ecosystem services (the positive benefits that ecosystems provide to humans) that functioning wetland ecosystems can provide to humans: among others, water purification, biodiversity support, and carbon sequestration. Building upon ongoing research on the science of cranberry bog restoration, this work integrates diverse forms of satellite, sensor, and scientific data to quantify the benefits of wetland restoration across the region and contextualize these benefits through economic comparisons. The goal of this work is to identify synergies between environmentally and economically advantageous uses of land, provide information and analysis to support sustainable land use outcomes, and motivate climate-friendly decision-making.

Land Use Scenarios and Ecosystem Service Modeling

As part of this project, our team randomly generated potential land use scenarios that envisioned different combinations of cranberry farming and wetland restoration distributed across today's actual cranberry farms. For each of these different scenarios, we modeled the potential impact of this new land use on three different ecosystem services: water quality, habitat quality, and carbon storage and sequestration. The models estimated the geospatial distribution of these ecosystem services; that is, at any given point in space, how much of a change in water quality, or habitat quality, or carbon storage there was predicted to be. The ecosystem services modeling was carried out using InVEST, a suite of open-source ecosystem service modeling tools developed by the Natural Capital Project.

Economic Contextualization and Restoration Priority Ranking

After modeling the potential amount and distribution of these ecosystem services under different restoration scenarios, we used simple cost heuristics to estimate the economic value that could be generated from these ecosystem services. We then used municipal budget data to contextualize the value of potential restorations on a town-by-town basis. This analysis was conducted to raise awareness of the potential value of these ecosystem services, which are not traditionally taken into account in land use decisions and value assessments.

Additionally, we developed a restoration priority ranking by combining information from our models of potential ecosystem services. Bogs with a high ranking were predicted to bring particularly high value to the region through water purification, biodiversity protection, and climate resilience. 

MA Land Use Data Explorer

This modeling work was aggregated in a web-based, geospatial decision-support tool intended to allow citizens, farmers, towns leaders, conservationists, and others to interact with and explore the impacts of different land use scenarios.

You are invited to explore the tool yourself, which can be found here: MA Land Use Data Explorer.