Measuring environmental benefits of conservation practices
Excerpt
Conservation practices are designed to reduce losses of soil, nutrients, pesticides, pathogens, and other biological and chemical materials from agricultural lands, conserve natural resources, enhance the quality of the agro-ecosystem, and enhance wildlife habitat. The Farm Security and Rural Investment Act of 2002—referred to as the 2002 farm bill—substantially increased funding levels of conservation programs—up nearly 80 percent above the level set for conservation under the 1996 farm bill. While it is widely recognized that these conservation programs will protect millions of acres, the environmental benefits have not previously been quantified for reporting at the national scale. Moreover, while an extensive body of literature exists on the effects of conservation practices at the field level, there are few research studies designed to measure the larger effects.
The Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) and the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) are working together on the Conservation Effects Assessment Project (CEAP) to quantify the environmental benefits of conservation practice at the national and watershedscales as a measure for how the money being spent is meeting the goals.
CEAP is an on-going mix of data collection, model development, model application, and research. One of the goals is to dovelop the …
Footnotes
Maurice J. Mausbach is the deputy chief for the Soil Survey and Resource Assessment at the U.S. Department of Agriculture Natural Resources Conservation Service in Washington, D.C. Allen R. Dedrick is the deputy administrator for the Natural Resources and Sustainable Agricultural Systems in Bellsville, Maryland.
- Copyright 2004 by the Soil and Water Conservation Society
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