The effect of forest land use on the cost of drinking water supply: machine learning evidence from South African data
EfD Authors:
Water quality amelioration is one of the key ecosystem services provided by forests in the catchment areas of water supply systems. In this study, we applied random effect models and the least absolute shrinkage and selection regression method of machine learning to South African panel data to estimate the causal effect of natural forest cover on municipalities’ water treatment cost. We controlled for a range of confounding covariates including other land cover variables including wetlands, plantation forests, grassland, woodland etc.
