Diane Hite1, Brent Sohngen2
1. Auburn University, 2.The Ohio State University

The focus of this paper is to study the impacts of deforestation and green space losses over time on houses in California. Our analysis is unique in that we have housing sales data for two time periods in each of 12 areas of interest, that are matched to satellite imagery from which.
We use a geographically explicit database of 9,962 residential house sales from 12 areas of interest in California to estimate the impacts of changes in green space on house sales prices. The sales took place during the 2003-2005 and 2007-2009 time periods; for those periods, a measure of change in green space as a proxy for urban forests for each house was developed using geographic information systems. In addition, we have initial tree canopy cover variables for the lots of each house, along with the insurance hazard classification of each house, which is positively correlated with tree canopy.