Recreation 46w ww ww w. .f fr ro on nt ti ie er rs si in ne ec co ol lo og gy y. .o or rg g © © The Ecological Society of America A gricultural lands supply many ecosystem services desired by society, beyond merely providing food and fiber (Clay 2004). Cultivated lands and grazing systems account for nearly 50% of the global land surface (Asner et al. 2004; MA 2004). Although agriculture produces food and fiber often at the expense of biodiversity, water quality, and soil conservation (eg Bennett and Balvanera 2007;Kareiva et al. 2007), alternative policies and management of these lands could increase the provision of multiple ecosystem services (Boody et al. 2005;Robertson and Swinton 2005;Swinton et al. 2006).Agri-environmental programs that are designed to increase provision of environmental services from agricultural land rarely pay directly for the documented services produced. Rather, they either offer subsidies or cost-sharing for implementing best management practices (BMPs) or taking land out of production, or use regulations to limit adverse environmental effects (Feather et al. 1999;Kleijn and Sutherland 2003). Government programs often provide incentives to adopt agency-prescribed management practices without determining whether the desired environmental benefits are achieved ). An alternative approach is to pay directly for environmental services produced through Pay-forEnvironmental Services (PES) programs (Ferraro and Kiss 2002;Pagiola et al. 2004Pagiola et al. , 2007Wunder et al. 2008). These programs draw from the concept of valuing ecosystem services (eg Daily et al. 2000; Tallis and Karieva 2005;Brown et al. 2007), although designing workable PES programs from this concept is a distant reality.Of the many policy and technical requirements of PES programs, first and foremost is the need to identify environmental services valued by buyers who are willing and able to pay for them. The theory is that by focusing on environmental results and not just practices, market-like programs will encourage producer-sellers to innovate and seek cost efficiencies in providing services ( There is growing interest in implementing market-like programs that would pay farmers and ranchers for producing environmental services (beyond those that generate food and fiber) from working agricultural lands. I In n a a n nu ut ts sh he el ll l: :• There is increasing interest in developing Pay-forEnvironmental Services (PES) programs to encourage the provision of multiple ecosystem services from agricultural lands, but few examples of such programs exist • The Florida Ranchlands Environmental Services Project (FRESP) has been designing a PES program in which state agencies pay ranchers for producing environmental serviceswater storage and reduced phosphorus loading -on private ranchlands in south-central Florida • The PES concept in FRESP differs from traditional cost-share or conservation programs, in that the intent is to pay ranchers for providing documented environmental services, rather than to offer cost-sharing opti...
Near-infrared reflectance spectroscopy is a demonstrated tool for quantitative analysis of numerous soil properties. Reported advantages include analytical precision, predictive accuracy, and reduced costs and processing times. A library (N = 1933) representing all major soil orders in Florida was assembled from samples submitted to the University of Florida Extension Soil Testing Laboratory for routine testing during 2004-2005. High-resolution diffuse reflectance spectra from each sample in the visible/near infrared were used to predict observations made using standard laboratory analytical procedures for soil pH, Mehlich-1-extractable P, K, Ca, Mg, Cu, Mn, and Zn, percentage of organic matter, and saturated hydraulic conductivity (K sat ). Calibrations were immediately applicable for organic matter and Al, based on relative performance determinant values (RPD = standard deviation/standard error of validation 9 2.0). Models for pH, P, Ca, and K sat showed moderate accuracy (1.5 G RPD G 2.0), whereas those for K, Cu, Mg, Mn, Zn, and Fe exhibited low efficiency (RPD G 1.5), indicating a need for further refinement before near-infrared reflectance spectroscopy is a viable alternate method to standard laboratory procedures. Prediction of soil fertility and productivity based on published Florida soil diagnostic categories showed effective discrimination for pH, P Mg, Mn, Cu (phytotoxicity), and K sat . Our study showed that prediction efficiency is a strong function of mean nutrient/analyte concentration in the soil. We further demonstrated that near-infrared reflectance spectroscopy error rates were comparable to, and in some cases smaller than, laboratory analytical error rates, suggesting that the observed low spectral prediction efficiency may be substantially because of uncertainty in the laboratory data. (Soil Science 2007;172:469-485)
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