Land use change and water quality-related ecosystem services

Background/Question/Methods

The past decade has seen significant rates of grassland conversion to row crop agriculture in the U.S.  Grasslands provide habitat for migratory birds and valuable ecosystem goods and services that may be lost or degraded due observed and predicted future trends in land use change. The Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS2) offers an opportunity to mitigate trends in grassland loss by providing an incentive for farmers to produce perennial grass feedstocks for bioenergy. 

Results/Conclusions

We use the ecosystem services model InVEST (Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Tradeoffs) to investigate how alternative scenarios with and without adoption of switchgrass production affect the provision of multiple ecosystem services.  We find that perennial grasses can have net negative, positive, or neutral impacts on water quality depending on the types of land covers they displace.  We also illustrate how linking biophysical changes in water quality with spatial variability in the demand for water-related services can inform decisions about the placement of bioenergy crops.