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Implementation of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) and Wetlands Reserve Program (WRP) has resulted in the restoration of >2 million ha of wetland and grassland habitats in the Prairie Pothole Region (PPR). Restoration of habitats through these programs provides diverse ecosystem services to society, but few investigators have evaluated the environmental benefits achieved by these programs. We describe changes in wetland processes, functions, and ecosystem services that occur when wetlands and adjacent uplands on agricultural lands are restored through Farm Bill conservation programs. At the scale of wetland catchments, projects have had positive impacts on water storage,...
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Final Report - Executive Summary: This final project report is prepared to summarize the research project titled “Assessing evapotranspiration rate changes for proposed restoration of the forested uplands of the Desert Landscape Conservation Cooperatives (LCC)” for the Desert LCC of the Bureau of Reclamation as a requirement for closing out the project. This report includes the scope of work, summary of research project, results, and conclusions.Among all of the components of the terrestrial water cycle, evapotranspiration (ET) consumes the largest amount of water. Accurate estimation of ET is very important to understand the influence of ET to the hydrologic response of recharge and runoff processes in the water...
Categories: Data, Publication; Types: Citation, Map Service, OGC WFS Layer, OGC WMS Layer, OGC WMS Service; Tags: 2012, ATMOSPHERE, ATMOSPHERE, ATMOSPHERIC WATER VAPOR, ATMOSPHERIC WATER VAPOR, All tags...
Despite being recognized as essential to soil health, soil fauna often are afforded inadequate protection. In this paper, we discuss interpretations of this problem from a traditional economic perspective. We argue that the traditional economic framework can provide adequate soil fauna protection if market failures are corrected, and in particular, all relevant costs and benefits to society are accounted for. In turn, we describe some of the techniques economists use to value changes in natural resource services and environmental quality that are not otherwise valued in markets. We identify some of the challenges in applying these methods, their limitations, and provide examples relevant to soil faunal services....
Abstract (from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S143383191400105X): Floodplain forests are extremely productive for agriculture and historical floodplain forests have been converted to prime agricultural land throughout the world, resulting in disruption of ecosystem functioning. Given that flooding may increase with climate change and reforestation will increase resiliency to climate change, we tested whether reforested floodplains also have great potential to store carbon and the effects of even modest increases in forested acreage on carbon storage. To calculate potential aboveground biomass in the Lower Mississippi River Alluvial Valley (LMAV) of the United States, we determined current and historical...
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Conclusions: Report presents a framework for assessing the condition of Southern Alberta’s natural assets and their ability to provide ecosystem goods and services. Measurable indicators of ecosystem services, including broad and fine scale landscape indicators, were also distilled from a literature review. Thresholds/Learnings: Wetland cover should be maintained at >15% for watersheds with high potential for phosphorus loading & eutrophication. Impervious cover should be maintained at or below 25% in heavily urbanizing watersheds. Synopsis: This report develops a framework for assessing the condition of Southern Alberta’s natural assets and their resulting ability to provide ecosystem goods and services. The...
Conclusions:Wetlands were found to work best, in terms of providing ecosystem services, as spatially distributed systems. Wetland value was also found to be highly depended on its hydrogeomorphic position in the landscape relative to other landscape features and human settlements. Wetlands should comprise 3-7% of temperate watersheds for flood control and improved water qualityThresholds/Learnings:Wetlands should comprise 3-7% of temperate watersheds for flood control and improved water quality
Restoration of ecological processes is key to restoring the capacity of ecosystems to support social, economic, cultural and aesthetic values. The sustainability of the restored system also depends on processes associated with carbon, nutrient and hydrologic cycles, yet most restoration monitoring is limited to plant community composition. Our research has shown that short-term plant composition monitoring is a necessary but insufficient predictor of long-term restoration success. Long-term (up to 75 years) studies in the western United States show that short-term monitoring of plant community composition alone incorrectly predicted the failure of treatments that were ultimately successful, and the success of treatments...
Ecosystem services analysis can help recognize the full costs and benefits of land management decisions. Quantification and valuation of services can enhance policies and regulations and, if linked with payments or incentives, properly reward private decisions that yield public benefits. However, the field of ecosystem services research is relatively new and quantification and valuation remains highly uncertain. While there is significant uncertainty about the biophysical production of ecosystem services, there is additional uncertainty about the value of services. This paper explores how uncertainty associated with valuation of ecosystem services in agriculture affects the ranking of land use alternatives in terms...
Instrumental climate records suggest that summer precipitation and winter snowpack in Glacier National Park (Glacier NP), Montana, vary significantly over decadal to multidecadal time scales. Because instrumental records for the region are limited to the twentieth century, knowledge of the range of variability associated with these moisture anomalies and their impacts on ecosystems and physical processes are limited. The authors developed a reconstruction of summer (June–August) moisture variability spanning a.d. 1540–2000 from a multispecies network of tree-ring chronologies in Glacier NP. Decadal-scale drought and pluvial regimes were defined as any event lasting 10 yr or greater, and the significance of each...
Agricultural ecosystems provide many ecosystem services (ES) which are essential to human health and well-being. In turn, some ES affect agricultural productivity. Managing agricultural lands to provide more ES and higher quality ES may be essential for the long-term sustainability of agricultural ecosystems. Most agricultural lands, however, are managed for the short-term production of food, fiber, and fuel, often at the expense of other ES. Proposed solutions to the underprovision of ES often involve government regulation or market incentives. A growing number of scholars, however, recognize the potential for a third approach—cooperative solutions. One important element in determining if an ES is a suitable candidate...
This study employs the hedonic pricing method and a rich spatial and temporal dataset from two counties in Washington, USA to determine the effect of the 2009 Nisqually Restoration project (NRP) on housing prices in adjacent communities. The NRP restored 308 hectares of wetlands via dike removal in the Billy Frank Jr. Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge (NNWR), leading to improvements in salmon and bird abundance and recreational opportunities. We find that the ecological improvements made by the NRP increased the value of homes within 0.5 mile of the refuge by $37,631; homes 0.5 to 1 mile by $10,489; and homes 1 to 1.5 miles by $31,186. Our findings are consistent with previous wetland hedonic price analyses and...
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Conservation prioritization usually focuses on conservation of rare species or biodiversity, rather than ecological processes. This is partially due to a lack of informative indicators of ecosystem function. Biological soil crusts (BSCs) trap and retain soil and water resources in arid ecosystems and function as major carbon and nitrogen fixers; thus, they may be informative indicators of ecosystem function. We created spatial models of multiple indicators of the diversity and function of BSCs (species richness, evenness, functional diversity, functional redundancy, number of rare species, number of habitat specialists, nitrogen and carbon fixation indices, soil stabilization, and surface roughening) for the 800,000-ha...
Abstract (from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1365-2664.12847/full): Climate models predict increasing drought intensity and frequency for many regions, which may have negative consequences for tree recruitment, growth and mortality, as well as forest ecosystem services. Furthermore, practical strategies for minimizing vulnerability to drought are limited. Tree population density, a metric of tree abundance in a given area, is a primary driver of competitive intensity among trees, which influences tree growth and mortality. Manipulating tree population density may be a mechanism for moderating drought-induced stress and growth reductions, although the relationship between tree population density and...
We quantified baseline and projected change in wildlife habitat, soil organic carbon (SOC), and water supply (recharge and runoff). For six case study watersheds we quantified the interactions of future development and changing climate on recharge, runoff and streamflow, and precipitation thresholds where dominant watershed hydrological processes shift through analysis of covariance.
Interest in the utilization of forest biomass for energy is growing. A search into existing forest biomass harvesting and regeneration guidelines was carried out to identify how biomass energy can be environmentally sustainable. Findings have shown that there are only a few guidelines that specifically address harvesting and regenerating biomass for bioenergy or other bio-based products. Of these few, there are guidelines developed for dedicated energy plantations such as the Scottish Agricultural College guidelines, as well as some Finnish and Swedish guidelines recommending management practices for both timber and biomass extraction. Most of the existing small woody material guidelines emphasize the retention,...
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Conclusions: Four plant species have been tested in the majority of field evaluations, while plants native to the test area and perennial plants are particularly underrepresented. Native plants useful in restoration of rare ecosystems can increase natural enemy abundance and provide ecosystem services as much as widely recommended non-natives. Thresholds/Learnings: Synopsis: The intentional provision of flowering plants and plant communities in managed landscapes to enhance natural enemies is termed habitat management and is a relatively new but growing aspect of conservation biology. The focus of most habitat management research has been on understanding the role of these plant-provided resources on natural enemy...
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Synopsis: Beneficial arthropods, including native bees, predators, and parasitoids, provide valuable ecosystem services worth $8 billion to US agriculture each year. These arthropod-mediated ecosystem services (AMES) include crop pollination and pest control, which help to maintain agricultural productivity and reduce the need for pesticide inputs. Maximizing survival and reproduction of beneficial arthropods requires provision of pollen and nectar resources that are often scarce in modern agricultural landscapes. Increasingly, native plants are being evaluated for this purpose. Native plants can outperform recommended non-natives and also provide local adaptation, habitat permanency, and support of native biodiversity....
map background search result map search result map Prioritizing Conservation Effort through the Use of Biological Soil Crusts as Ecosystem Function Indicators in an Arid Region Maximizing ecosystem services from conservation biological control: The role of habitat management Ecosystem Goods and Services Southern Alberta Assessment of Natural Asset Condition Maximizing arthropod-mediated ecosystem services in agricultural landscapes: the role of native plants. Report and Publications: Assessing Evapotranspiration Rate Changes for Proposed Restoration of the Forested Uplands of the DLCC Prioritizing Conservation Effort through the Use of Biological Soil Crusts as Ecosystem Function Indicators in an Arid Region Ecosystem Goods and Services Southern Alberta Assessment of Natural Asset Condition Report and Publications: Assessing Evapotranspiration Rate Changes for Proposed Restoration of the Forested Uplands of the DLCC Maximizing arthropod-mediated ecosystem services in agricultural landscapes: the role of native plants. Maximizing ecosystem services from conservation biological control: The role of habitat management