Conservation intelligence

Excerpt

Intelligence—the process of assembling facts and turning them into knowledge of what might happen and what we are able to do about it—has been in the news a lot. We have learned a great deal about how critical good intelligence is to our national security. Lately, I've been thinking about how critical good conservation intelligence is to our profession.

The notion of a conservation intelligence system first came to me toward the end of our blue ribbon panel January meeting. The panel is reviewing U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) plans for the Conservation Effects Assessment Project (CEAP), an effort to build the capacity to simulate the effects of conservation practices on soil, water, air, and wildlife. USDA asked SWCS to do an external, policy-level review of their plans. A couple weeks later, I was at another SWCS CEAP workshop that brought together scientists working to document what we know and don't know about the environmental benefits of conservation practices applied to cropland. And a couple weeks after that I participated in an USDA Agricultural Research Service (ARS) meeting to review all the ARS watershed studies underway to improve our understanding of …