Print PageOver the past five years the Florida Ranchlands Environmental Services Project (FRESP) has been field testing a payment for environmental services program in the Northern Everglades with the goal of providing water retention and nutrient removal services on working ranchlands to restore sensitive downstream ecosystems. Designs for site specific on-ranch water management projects in the pilot program included wetland rehydration, flow-through nutrient removal, and pasture water control. Real-time hydrologic monitoring equipment recorded data to allow documentation of stage, discharge, rainfall, pump volume, and nutrient concentrations. The pilot project was implemented through a collaboration of state and federal agencies, ranchers, scientists, and environmental groups and is now in the process of transitioning to a watershed scale payment for environmental services (PES) program. In the emerging PES program there will be a requirement to estimate the services provided as a basis for creating a PES contract.
Results/Conclusions
One of the largest hurdles was developing a method to predict the provision of the services provided by individual landowner projects. A user-friendly potential water retention model (PWRM) was developed to estimate the expected water retention at each site over ten years. The challenge of information exchange between agencies and land owners was met with field team communication and the development of an internet based database. The use of wireless (cellular and radio) telemetry increased efficiency in budget, personnel resources, and data quality. Remote monitoring reduced data loss due to equipment malfunction and enabled problems to be fixed quickly. Preliminary data show site visits were reduced by approximately 50% and the percentage of reliable data increased by 16% when comparing sites with telemetry and sites without. Wireless technology was integral to maintaining multiple streams of data monitoring for environmental services. Advanced tools for environmental monitoring, data transmission, and site management reduce costs and facilitate estimation of environmental services in large, complex PES programs.
