Multifunctional Landsccapes
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This document summarizes a presentation about multifunctional landscapes and ecosystem services. It discusses the different types of ecosystem services like provisioning, regulating, cultural, and supporting services. It notes agriculture's challenges in sustaining food production while conserving resources. The presentation explores using marginal lands for bioenergy crops to provide multiple benefits like bioenergy production, improved water quality through reduced nitrate leaching, and enhanced pollinator habitat. Economic analyses show the value of improved water quality can outweigh crop revenue, suggesting opportunities for water quality trading programs. The presentation concludes that addressing agriculture's sustainability challenges requires a systems approach that values ecosystem services alongside commodity production.
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Multifunctional Landsccapes
- 1. Multifunctional Landscapes: Ecosystem Services and economics M. Cristina Negri Principal Agronomist, Argonne National Laboratory Soil and Water Conservation Society 72nd International Annual Conference Madison, Wisconsin. negri@anl.gov
- 2. Of Ecosystem Services, or the benefits people obtain from ecosystems (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2003) Provisioning services Products obtained from ecosystems Feed Fresh water Food Fiber Bio-chemicals Genetic resources Regulating Services Benefits obtained from regulation of ecosystem processes Climate regulation Disease regulation Water regulation Water purification Pollination Cultural Services Nonmaterial Benefits obtained from ecosystems Spiritual and religious Recreation and ecotourism Aesthetic Inspirational Educational Sense of place Cultural heritage Supporting Services Soil formation Nutrient cycling Primary production
- 3. Agriculture’s sustainability challenge Providing food, feed, fiber, energy for a growing world population Conserving soil, water and biodiversity, and decreasing greenhouse gases Providing resilience to a changing climate The rural-urban tension, urbanization and the loss of soil and land 3 E. Detaille, Charge of the 4th Hussars at the battle of Friedland, 14 June 1807 - http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/10 Detaille_4th_French_hussar_at_Friedland.jpg Source: U.S. Global Change Research Program http://e360.yale.edu/feature report_gives_sobering_view_of_warmings_imp act_on_us/2166/ Seeding Our Future by R. L. Crouse.
- 4. Systems level problems demand multiple outcomes http://res.cloudinary.com/dk-find-out/image/upload/q_80,w_1440/A-Getty-107758168_bp1kbk.jpg Rural economics and developmentResource use
- 5. Rethinking the agricultural landscape
- 6. Sustainable land use intensification at the farm level Bringing industrial ecology concepts to the field 6 Underproductive land + excess nitrate recycle + deep rooted bioenergy crop = integrated landscape: sustained bioenergy production + environmental services + optimized farm revenue
- 7. Understanding site conditions and marginality Crop Yield VERIS® soil mapping and image provided by Farm Map Solutions, LLC. Hamada et al., 2015
- 8. Economic losses and environmental concerns often go together 8 Net profit ($/ac) AVG ($/acre) = 153 STD ($/acre) = 230 Nitrate 6 ft bgs
- 9. Working landscapes are smart! 201120132014 07/01/2011 07/08/2011 07/15/2011 08/12/2011 06/11/2013 06/20/2013 06/27/2013 07/10/2013 06/10/2014 06/25/2014 07/07/2014 07/16/2014 2015 06/9/2015 06/18/2015 07/07/2015 07/21/2015
- 10. Landscape designed cropping can address externalities and sequester nitrate 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 2013 2014 2015 2016 NO₃+NO₂-N(mgL-1) Corn Willow 11.0% (1.00) -2.3% (1.00) 70.4% (0.003) * 87.7% (0.007)* Zumpf et al., 2017
- 11. Water use and Nitrous oxide reduction 11 2014 2015 0 100 200 300 400 500 600 0 100 200 300 400 500 600 7/7/2015 8/7/2015 9/7/2015 10/7/2015 11/7/2015 Precipitation(mm) CumulativeTranspiration (mm/stand) Willow Corn Precipitation (Avg) 2016-17
- 12. Rethinking the Agricultural Landscape 12 Indian Creek watershed, IL Fairbury site, IL Soil drainage Surface water ponding Crop productivity index Nitrate leaching Pesticide leaching Flooding frequency
- 13. Design including bioenergy and water quality Watershed design for ecosystem services on “marginal lands” 13 Current land use Watershed landscape designs that improve water quality also seem to improve pollinator nesting index (InVEST model) Tile- nitrate leachate Sediment yield Pollinator nesting index Tile- nitrate leachate Sediment yield Pollinator nesting index
- 14. Opportunity costs and cost of water quality service Sensitive to corn yields, at current prices a perennial crop such as bioenergy willow could represent a viable alternative in underproductive subfield patches if there were a market for it. Christianson L, Tyndall J, Helmers M. Financial comparison of seven nitrate reduction strategies for Midwestern agricultural drainage. Water Resources and Economics. 2013;2–3:30-56 -20 -10 0 10 20 30 40 Willow net revenue Opportunity cost lo Opportunity cost Hi $/ton(biomass) Net Revenue and Opportunity Cost Assumes biomass is sold for a revenue
- 15. The value of the water quality improvement alone well surpasses the returns from the crop -$600 -$400 -$200 $0 $200 $400 $600 $800 $1,000 $1,200 $1,400 Returns from SWG Value of reductions in soil losses Value of reductions in nitrogen losses $1,351 -$427 Analysis in collaboration with S. Secchi and J. Heavey, SIU
- 16. What is needed to capitalize on this value? Opportunities for a trading system A certification grade assessment of the value traded Data, data and data A coordinated network of sites (observatories) and studies that can provide a common approach and results from a diverse set of conditions A coordinated effort in developing, incrementing and vetting modeling tools that an provide low uncertainty, high accuracy predictive information
- 17. To conclude o Addressing multiple needs at the same time requires a broader view and a systems approach o Eventually, sustainable agriculture it will require the valuation of ecosystem services in addition to the value of the commodity produced o It will take careful adjustments to diets, advances in productivity, and science-guided innovation to ensure that all our children will have food to eat and a clean environment in which to thrive. oWe all can make a difference through our choices and awareness.
- 18. Acknowledgements Jules Cacho, Herbert Ssegane, Patty Campbell, Colleen Zumpf The many student interns who help us every summer The Livingston County NRCS and SWCD, Chad Watts, Conservation Technology Information Center, the many farmers providing their viewpoint, Eric Rund, Harold Reetz and Paul Kilgus. The Nassauer Lab, University of Michigan, and Secchi Lab, Southern Illinois University. This work is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Bioenergy Technologies Office.
Editor's Notes
- For bioenergy, it is important to find its place to build the bioeconomy Agriculture is the single largest employer in the world, providing livelihoods for 40% of today’s global population. It is the largest source of income and jobs for poor rural households
- Market openings helped bring about landscape transformations Introduction of soybeans on the 20s Introduction of haber bosch – allowed to alter rotations Why cant we think of a perennial – annual integrated landscape? Agricultural landscapes are complex systems but our current goals for their cropping are often simple Agriculture is the oldest and largest geoengineering endeavor of humankind Landscapes change - Can we drive this change to meet our needs?
- Well this map showing the spatial variability of net profit for corn in our study site prior to any conservation practice implementation, may help to set up the conversation about intrafield production economics. I learned, last week at the international association for Landscape ecology conference that Iowa State University has done a similar analysis state wide. And like us, they see the same trends over time, where the same areas are underproductive year after year. So why do farmers still plant these are with grain crop? Well crop insurance higher corn prices mask these economic losses of these subfield areas. In our field study site, on average the field was profitable ($153/ac), the high standard deviation ($230/ac) is indicative of the fact that the farmer was losing money in some subfield areas. Geostatistical analysis results for the net profit map show that the farmer was losing at least $50 per acre on 16% of the field (orange to red areas) One of the potential end goals of bioenergy crop integration is to reduce the overall field standard deviation in net profit ($230) by addressing those specific areas which are losing money Now that we have identified areas that are economically underproductive, the next step was to see if those areas coincided with areas that are susceptible to environmental degradation Confusion matrix: matching areas that simultaneously have low yield with nutrient hotspot
- Figure 2: Spatially explicit field map of nitrate and nitrite nitrogen (NO3+NO2-N, mg L-1) concentration at 1.2m depth depicting field-scale NO3+NO2-N hotspots a month after corn planting (a). In addition to low yield areas, these nitrogen leachate hotspots are the next level of target soils to integrate bioenergy crops into agricultural landscapes. Figure 2a shows the temporal reduction in annual NO3+NO2-N leachate concentration (69% in second year after willow coppicing) in plots planted in willow instead of corn. While figure 2c demonstrates that part of the reduction in NO3+NO2-N leachate concentration is due to willow plant uptake (80 kgN ha-1yr-1) because of zero fertilizer application in willow plots.
- Figure 2: Spatially explicit field map of nitrate and nitrite nitrogen (NO3+NO2-N, mg L-1) concentration at 1.2m depth depicting field-scale NO3+NO2-N hotspots a month after corn planting (a). In addition to low yield areas, these nitrogen leachate hotspots are the next level of target soils to integrate bioenergy crops into agricultural landscapes. Figure 2a shows the temporal reduction in annual NO3+NO2-N leachate concentration (69% in second year after willow coppicing) in plots planted in willow instead of corn. While figure 2c demonstrates that part of the reduction in NO3+NO2-N leachate concentration is due to willow plant uptake (80 kgN ha-1yr-1) because of zero fertilizer application in willow plots.
- Coming from central Illinois, where one of the dominant land covers is some form of agriculture, land which in turn feeds into these large water systems, there a need to think about how sustain these agricultural systems in such a way that still promotes growth in the future but limits the environmental impacts these practices have. Bioenergy crop integration within the agricultural landscape has the potential to improve both the sustainability of the system by providing additional regulating services, but also to optimize the provisioning services: energy, food and conservation, at multiple scales. However, the strategic placement of bioenergy crops within the agricultural landscape at these multiple scales is key! For example our field site in Fairbury, IL has portions in which we classify as marginal, where marginal is defined as land that is either susceptible to environmental degradation, is economically underproductive or both. In our case, the upland portion of our field has a high risk of runoff, is susceptible to nitrate leaching, and has low crop productivity. These are the types of areas we target for bioenergy crop integration, in this case short rotation shrub willow, as a buffer to have the largest impact upon the system in terms of nitrate reduction and nutrient recovery. The same concept applies at the watershed scale. Our watershed is the Indian Creek watershed (which 87% is in agriculture with 104 farms). Its at the headwater of the Vermillion river watershed which is nitrate impaired. This flows into the Illinois river (who watershed is dominated by agriculture), onto the Mississippi River and into the Gulf of Mexico which are all impaired in some way. So this talk will focus on the viability of this type of system as a conservation practice in the Midwest as well as economically as a bioenergy cropping system. Bioenergy crop integration not only has the potential to address nutrient reduction which: Illinois Nutrient Reduction Strategy mirrors the goals of the Mississippi River and Gulf of Mexico Task force goals (45% reduction in nitrate nitrogen and total phosphorus by 2035. And biofuel production: From an energy standpoint, biofuel production addresses the Energy independence and security act of 2007, where renewable fuel mandates that 16 billion gallons of 36 billions gallons of biofuels from cellulosic feedstocks are to be annually produced by 2022, but also other synergistic ecological and environmental services including pollinator habitat and carbon sequestration Provisioning services: products obtained from ecosystems (food, water, fiber, biochemical, genetic resources) Regulating services: benefits obtained from the regulation of ecosystem services (climate, disease, water regulation, water purification, pollination) Cultural services: nonmaterial benefits obtained from the ecosystem (spiritual, recreation, aesthetic, inspirational, educational, ecotourism, cultural heritage) Supporting services: services necessary for the production of all other ecosystem services 9soil formation, nutrient cycling, primary production)
- This slide shows how a transition to a BAU to a landscape that incorporate perennial bioenergy crops in low productivity and environmentally vulnerable land has the potential to reduce sediment and nitrate loadings to surface water. It also shows how this alternative design centered around water quality can also favorably impact the pollinator nesting index.
- Costs vary based on: N removal % : 40-80% [literature] Nitrate leachate: 20-50 kg N/ ha [literature] Net revenue [Ecowillow]