Grantee Research Project Results
2010 Progress Report: Assessing Trade-Offs among Ecosystem Services in a Payment-for-Water Services Program on Florida Ranchlands
EPA Grant Number: R834567Title: Assessing Trade-Offs among Ecosystem Services in a Payment-for-Water Services Program on Florida Ranchlands
Investigators: Swain, Hilary M , Fauth, John E. , Bohlen, Patrick J , Jenkins, David , Kiker, Gregory , Quintana-Ascencio, Pedro , Shukla, Sanjay
Institution: Archbold Biological Station , University of Florida , University of Central Florida
Current Institution: Archbold Biological Station , University of Central Florida , University of Florida
EPA Project Officer: Packard, Benjamin H
Project Period: January 1, 2010 through December 31, 2012 (Extended to January 31, 2013)
Project Period Covered by this Report: January 1, 2010 through December 31,2010
Project Amount: $498,835
RFA: Enhancing Ecosystem Services From Agricultural Lands: Management, Quantification, And Developing Decision Support Tools (2009) RFA Text | Recipients Lists
Research Category: Ecological Indicators/Assessment/Restoration , Aquatic Ecosystems
Progress Summary:
We selected four ranches with water management alternatives (WMAs) to investigate the relationships among hydrology, biodiversity, ecosystem services and ecosystem stressors. The four ranches we selected are Alderman-Deloney Ranch, Buck Island Ranch, Williamson Ranch, and Peleaz Ranch. We had originally selected Rafter T Ranch to include in the project, but we changed to Peleaz Ranch because of a richer hydrological dataset at Peleaz Ranch. Peleaz Ranch is already extensively instrumented to document hydrology and water quality in a water holding project jointly funded by the FDACS, SFWMD, and FDEP. The other three of the selected ranches are in the Florida Ranchlands Environmental Services Project (FRESP). One of the goals of FRESP is to field test a payment-for-environmental-services program (PES) on Florida ranches. FRESP is funded to accurately measure, document, and model water services, and is developing an economic decision tool to help ranchers understand the financial costs of providing water ecosystem services. Detailed descriptions of these four ranches can be found in the Standard Operating Procedures document, pages 34-38 and page 50.
We sampled 15 wetlands across the four ranches three times in 2010 at the beginning (May 18-20), middle (July 27-29), and end of the wet season (September 23-25). The wetlands represent a range of hydrologic condition and hydroperiods, allowing us to test the relationships among ecosystem services, stressors, and hydrologic conditions. We selected wetlands embedded in both improved pastures and semi-native pastures to sample a range of land-use types (see Attachment A in Quality Assurance Plan page 36). Improved pastures are composed primarily of the introduced forage grass, Bahia grass (Paspalum notatum Flueggé), are typically fertilized annually with N, were historically fertilized with P (1960’s -1986), are grazed more intensely during the summer wet season, and contain numerous drainage ditches. Semi-native pastures are composed of a mixture of Bahia grass as well as native grasses (i.e., Andropogon spp. L., Axonopus spp. P. Beauv., and Panicum spp. Schult.), have never been fertilized, are moderately grazed mostly during the winter dry season, and have few drainage ditches.
Our sampling regime followed a stratified random pattern, allowing us to sample strata in shallow (0-15 cm), mid (16-30), and deep (31-45 cm) water depths within each wetland. In addition, the number of sample locations was scaled to wetland size for adequate representation of wetland biodiversity. Our sampling was conducted so that plants, vertebrates, and invertebrates were collected at the same time so we could determine interactions between biota and in response to hydrologic gradients. During sampling of organisms, we collected data on water depth and wetted perimeter of wetlands. Hydrologic data being collected by the FRESP project continued to be collected for the year of 2010 and will continue to be collected at the four ranches through 2011.
Plant Sampling Status
We sampled 335 plots across the 15 wetlands in 2010. We found a total of 125 vascular plant species (of which 12 are classified as morpho-species) across all wetlands. The five most abundant species were 1. Panicum hemitomon, 2. Juncus effusus, 3. Bacopa monnieri, 4. Luziola fluitans, and 5. Pontedaria cordata. Species-area curves indicated that our sampling was close to reaching equilibrium in most wetlands (Figure 1). Taxa richness ranged from 12 species to 48 species (Table 1). A non-metric multidimensional scaling ordination (NMS) showed that wetlands from Alderman Ranch grouped with semi-native wetlands from Buck Island Ranch and Peleaz Ranch wetlands grouped with improved pasture wetlands on Buck Island. The two wetlands at the Williamson Ranch were separate, suggesting that these two wetlands are different in species composition than the other 13 wetlands (Figure 2). In the sampled wetlands, most species had a wetland indicator status of FACW or OBL, ranging from 81-100% of species. Biomass of plants was collected at the end of the growing season in 2010, and these samples are currently being processed for forage quality (crude protein and total digestible nutrients).
Table 1. Descriptions of wetland plant assemblages across the 15 wetlands from four different ranches.
Figure 1. A representative species-area curve of plant species at a wetland at Buck Island Ranch (bp310). The number of species increases as more plots are sampled, but reaches equilibrium as the number of plots increases but no new species are encountered.
Figure 2. Non-metric multidimensional scaling ordination. Species presence/absence was used in the analysis. Each symbol represents one pond. Symbols that are closer together represent ponds that are similar in plant species composition.
Vertebrate Sampling Status
We sampled 335 plots, following in the footsteps of the plant samplers. We have entered our data (2,500 lines of data). We used a box sampler and sweep net to collect our samples (see Attachment A in Quality Assurance Plan page 40). We have started to proof the data for entry errors and are now checking entered data against the original datasheets.
Invertebrate Sampling Status
We sampled the same plots as the plant and vertebrate teams. We swept a 1 m x 1 m area using a smaller mesh net to target small invertebrates. We preserved all samples with ethanol and are currently sorting the samples in the lab. (See complete sampling methods in Attachment A in Quality Assurance Plan page 40).
Hydrological Data
For a detailed description of hydrological data collected at the four ranches, please see Attachment A in Quality Assurance Plan pages 51-62 and pages 63-85. We installed staff gauges at all wetlands in the project, and these staff gauges will be visited biweekly. The water level at the wetlands on Peleaz Ranch is being monitored with data loggers that record a level every 15 minutes. There are groundwater monitoring wells at one wetland on Williamson Ranch and one at Alderman-Deloney Ranch (Fig. 3). There is also a groundwater well on or near each of eight wetlands at Buck Island Ranch, and we plan on installing wells at two more wetlands on Buck Island Ranch before the 2011 wet season. We have conducted preliminary analyses to extrapolate individual wetland depth and hydroperiod from watershed outfall water stage.
Figure 3. Groundwater data at two wetlands for 2010, one at Alderman Ranch (top graph) and Williamson Ranch (bottom graph). Black bars represent rainfall. Blue line represents water stage data that has been QAed. Red lines represent data that has not gone through the QA process yet.
In a preliminary analysis, in one watershed basin at Buck Island Ranch, we found that the average depth of wetlands was related to the water elevation at the watershed outfall (Figure 4; F(1,25) = 53.61, p < 0.0001, R2 = 0.68). This suggests that we can possibly use water level at the watershed outfall to roughly estimate wetland hydroperiod to be used in our analysis.
Figure 4. Average wetland depth in the watershed BIR 29 is related to the upstream water stage at the outfall structure.
Future Activities:
We plan on sampling plants, invertebrates, and vertebrates in the 15 wetlands over the 2011 wet season. Hydrological data collected through the FRESP project will continue to be collected. We will conduct another round of sampling of organisms in 2011 and hydrologic data will continue to be collected at all field sites. This year, we plan on completing the calibration and evaluation of MIKE-SHE/MIKE11 (hydrological model) for two ranch WMAs for evaluating multiple water management scenarios and will explore the development of hydro-ecological relationships to relate the model predictions to changes in ecological variables such as fish and frog populations and vegetation. After calibrating and validating the model, we will construct several water management scenarios that will include varying the board height and the structure types at the water control structures for water retention for different seasons. Spatially distributed water levels and flow from the outflow structures for different scenarios will be combined with the ecological relationships to predict the hydrological and ecological responses. Depending on the outcome of the spatially explicit modeling results at the two ranches, and resources available, empirical data will be used to develop relationships between flow, water level, and hydroperiod at the remaining two sites (Pelaez and Alderman Ranches). A major goal for 2011 is to conduct the preliminary analyses integrating hydrologic and ecological data. Relationships between ecological and hydrological data will be used to inform a decision support system for trade-off evaluation of multiple ecosystem services. During this year, we will work together to begin formulation of the decision support tool. This will include determining the target audience for the tool (government agencies or private landowners?) and evaluating several criteria, alternatives, and scenarios to analyze.
Journal Articles:
No journal articles submitted with this report: View all 2 publications for this projectProgress and Final Reports:
Original AbstractThe perspectives, information and conclusions conveyed in research project abstracts, progress reports, final reports, journal abstracts and journal publications convey the viewpoints of the principal investigator and may not represent the views and policies of ORD and EPA. Conclusions drawn by the principal investigators have not been reviewed by the Agency.