Watershed Conservation Auction 2D: Payments for Ecosystem Services

Auction Mechanism

Conservation budget $3,000k

Riparian buffer decay 1.00

Auction Result

Spent $0kof $3,000k

Parcels enrolled

0 / 81

Service purchased

0.0 units/yr

$ per service unit

—

Water quality index

0 / 100

How it works

This is the 2D top-down companion to the 3D Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) auction simulator — same mechanism, same numbers, viewed from directly above the watershed instead of in perspective. A watershed authority pays upstream landowners to convert farmland to forest buffer, because intact riparian forest filters sediment and nutrients before they reach the river (the framework behind real programs like Costa Rica's PSA and TEEB's push to price natural capital).

Each of the 81 parcels has a private opportunity cost c_i and a public service value v_i that decays with distance from the river band at the top of the grid:

v_i = 10 · exp(-distance_i / decay) · noise_i
ratio_i = c_i / v_i   (cost per unit of service)

The targeted (reverse) auction sorts all parcels by ascending ratio and enrolls them in that order until the budget runs out; random enrolls in shuffled order under the same budget, the flat-payment baseline most real PES schemes actually use.

Drag to pan the grid, scroll or pinch to zoom.
Riparian buffer decay controls how fast service value falls off with distance from the river — small values mean only parcels right on the bank matter.
Water quality index reads out how much of the watershed's maximum purchasable service value has actually been secured.

Farmland (unenrolled) Enrolled conservation forest River (water quality)

drag to pan · scroll to zoom