Richard Howitt

Richard Howitt

Emeritus Faculty

  • Agricultural and Resource Economics

Richard Howitt is a professor emeritus of agricultural and resource economics.

He has published widely on agricultural and environmental resource allocation issues, with special emphasis on agricultural land use, water markets and the application of optimization models to resource allocation questions.

He is a member of the Western Agricultural Economics Association of Environmental and Resource Economics and is a reviewer for seven scholarly journals.

He is also a member of the Watershed Center's Delta Solutions Group, and is a co-author of the 2007 Envisioning Futures for the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

His research interests include building computer models of how land and water are used, and their calibration to G.I.S-based data sets.

He is currently engaged in an analysis of land use patterns in the Delta and in an assessment of potential economic outcomes for agriculture and recreation in the Delta's primary zone under different flooding and water quality scenarios.

Research Interests & Expertise
  • Resource Economics

Richard Howitt's Recent Projects

Water Modeling in Agricultural Production

This technical workshop in collaboration with the California Water and Enviornmental Modeling Forum (CWEMF). This workshop presents various alternatives for modeling the economics of water use and water scarcity within an agricultural production setting, with a particular focus on California.

SWAP Model

This website provides and overview and resources on the Statewide Agricultural Production Model (SWAP).

Satellite Remote Sensing and Consumptive Water Use in the Delta

This study for the state Delta Protection Commission compared the effectiveness of using new remotely sensed measurement technology to estimate farmers' "consumptive water use," or the amount of irrigation water crops transpire and evaporate from the nearby soil.

California Fourth Climate Change Assessment

To more accurately estimate the threat posed by sea level rise and intense storms to coastal infrastructure, this research will provide assess coastal flood risk accounting for changing climate patterns, erosion rates, shifting beach forms, and vertical land movement. Methods will be developed to support site-specific, project level assessments of coastal vulnerabilities to sea level rise through integration of models of projected sea level rise and climate scenarios, coupled with local and regional-scale erosion rates and vertical land motion estimates.

Envisioning Futures for the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta (2007)

Beginning in December 2005, a group of faculty and researchers affiliated with the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences/John Muir Institute of the Environment and the nonprofit Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) began meetings to discuss the future of the Delta. The intent was to complete a major independent report analysing options for managing the increasingly unstable Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. The group included Ellen Hanak (Economist) with PPIC and from UC Davis: Jay Lund (Civil and Environmental Engineering), Jeff Mount (Geology), Peter Moyle (Wildlife and Conservation Biology), Richard Howitt (Agricultural and Resource Economics), and William Fleenor (Civil and Environmental Engineering).