Abstract
Agriculture produces more than just crops. Agricultural practices have environmental impacts that affect a wide range of ecosystem services, including water quality, pollination, nutrient cycling, soil retention, carbon sequestration, and biodiversity conservation. In turn, ecosystem services affect agricultural productivity. Understanding the contribution of various agricultural practices to the range of ecosystem services would help inform choices about the most beneficial agricultural practices. To accomplish this, however, we must overcome a big challenge in measuring the impact of alternative agricultural practices on ecosystem services and of ecosystem services on agricultural production. A framework is presented in which such indicators can be interpreted as well as the criteria for selection of indicators. The relationship between agricultural practices and land-use change and erosion impact on chemical use is also discussed. Together these ideas form the basis for identifying useful indicators for quantifying the costs and benefits of agricultural systems for the range of ecosystem services interrelated to agriculture.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 286-296 |
| Number of pages | 11 |
| Journal | Ecological Economics |
| Volume | 64 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Dec 15 2007 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:The project was partially funded by a contract between the Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program (SERDP) Ecosystem Management Program (SEMP) and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). Oak Ridge National Laboratory is managed by the UT-Battelle, LLC, for the U.S. Department of Energy under contract DE-AC05-00OR22725.
Keywords
- Agriculture
- Chemical
- Ecosystem services
- Erosion
- Land use
