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Of birds, carbon and water: integrating multiple ecosystem service impacts to identify locations for agricultural conservation practice adoption
Citation:
SANDER, H. Of birds, carbon and water: integrating multiple ecosystem service impacts to identify locations for agricultural conservation practice adoption. Presented at Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting, Seattle, WA, April 12 - 16, 2011.
Impact/Purpose:
The influence of landscape features (both anthropogenic and geophysical) on in-stream water quality and on biological integrity is recognized. Evidence from this laboratory indicates that the overall influence of landscapes on water quality is regulated by at least two elements: 1) the interactions between various types of landscape features within the catchment, and 2) spatial scale considerations. A systematic examination of both the spatial scale and the interactions between these various landscape features may be useful in developing an overarching understanding of the relationship between land cover and in-stream water quality and possibly on aquatic life as well. The Agency has recognized the role of landscape influences via the development of water quality criteria that are based on geographic boundaries (e.g., ecoregions). This project seeks to verify the validity of spatially based water quality criteria and in addition to explore whether this concept can be applied to biological endpoints (e.g., benthic macroinvertebrate assemblages).
Description:
Human use of the landscape for crop production can degrade ecosystem services. A number of agricultural conservation practices are touted as mitigating these impacts. Many of these practices are encouraged by incentive programs such as the Conservation Reserve Program administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture Farm Services Agency, but targeting practices to the locations where their impacts on multiple ecosystem services would be maximized is difficult. This study details a method for targeting a suite of agricultural conservation practices to specific farm parcels that would maximize service delivery if they adopted practices. This method uses a series of ecosystem service models related to avian habitat, water quality, and carbon sequestration and a system for integrating these to a single score for use in identifying parcels to adopt practices based on their combined impacts on these services. I illustrate the application of this method using an area of the corn belt of the midwestern U.S. and identify how land cover and ecosystem service delivery might change in this area if practices are adopted in the identified locations. This method could be used to generate valuable information for guiding management actions in implementing agricultural conservation incentive programs. Additionally, the method can generate alternative future landscapes in evaluating the potential impacts of agricultural conservation policies.