There is a growing interest in developing market like programs that would pay farmers and ranchers for producing ecosystem services on agricultural lands, but few example exist of programs that pay directly for environmental services produced. The Florida Ranchlands Environmental Services Project (FRESP) is an effort to design, test and evaluate a market-based program that would pay cattle ranchers to provide environmental services, specifically water storage and phosphorus (P) retention, in the Northern Everglades. These services are in high demand due to regional efforts aimed at restoring the ecology and hydrology of the south Florida ecosystem. FRESP’s goal is to encourage ranchers to increase the provision of environmental services while providing an alternative income source that will help improve the narrow economic margin of ranching. To test the FRESP concept, eight pilot sites were identified and instrumented for monitoring water and P inflow, outflow, and storage. The sites vary in their ability to provide the desired services. The water management alternatives include wetlands restoration, pasture water management, stormwater treatment areas and water impoundments. Here we focus on attempts to quantify the environmental service provided by a 1000-hectare storm water marsh/impoundment at the Lykes Brothers, Inc. cattle ranch in south-central Florida. The water management alternative at this site involves pumping water from a regional canal (C-40, Indian Prairie Canal) and filtering it through a private marsh impoundment to remove nutrients and provide water retention. The site is instrumented to measure water and nutrient inflows and outflows.
Results/Conclusions
Between July and October 2008, 198 cm of water was pumped into the marsh and 103 cm fell as rainfall, while 146 cm flowed through a discharge structure back into the C-40 canal. Thus 52% of the total water inflow was stored in the impoundment during this period. Evapotranspiration estimates indicated that ET losses contributed less than 25% of the total water balance. Stage-volume relationships showed that without considering discharge, this site has potential to store about 110 cm of surface water. During this initial study period, 5.9 metric tons of P were pumped into the site from the Indian Prairie canal, and 3.4 metric tons of P were discharged back to the canal in surface flow, indicating that the marsh retained 44% of total P inflows. These initial results show that ranches in the Northern Everglades can provide significant water-related environmental services that compliment other regional efforts to restore ecosystem functions in south Florida.
