Presentations
Paper presented at the 97th Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers. 1 March, New York, New York
Abstract
In this paper the author analyzes the role of spatial effects in agriculture, focusing on how climate influences the process of land-use decision-making. He hypothesizes that land-use climate sensitivities vary systematically with geographic location, according to associated social and physical influences. Land use is not a random process that occurs in a spatial vacuum; farmers are influenced by processes proximate to them. This assertion may be self-evident but there have been few attempts to operationalize it in empirical studies, especially where statistical regression analysis is employed. Polsky argues theoretically how spatial effects manifest in agriculture, outlines the statistical methods necessary to account for one type of spatial effect, horizontal spatial effects, and applies these techniques to the US Great Plains.