Nitrate pollution from agricultural drainage has caused water quality concerns worldwide, but there are several promising technologies to help mitigate this environmental degradation. While these practices primarily aim to improve water quality, they may also provide other 'additive' benefits or ecosystem services and the awareness of such benefits may influence their potential to be adopted by farmers. To investigate the impact that perceived ecosystem services has on a practice's adoption potential, we used a mixed methods approach consisting of a literature review, producer surveys, and a group discussion to explore farmer interest in and perceived benefits (on-farm and regional) of seven subsurface drainage nitrate reduction practices (controlled drainage, bioreactors, wetlands, nitrogen management rate, nitrogen management timing, cover crops, and diversified crop rotations). The nitrogen management practices were shown to be accessible and realistic options for water quality improvement as they elicited high interest and had the highest level of compatibility. However, these practices did not provide many other complementary ecosystem services. Conversely, wetlands had a high literature review-derived ecosystem service count, but were considered to have low compatibility, and survey respondents indicated less interest in this practice. The practice of cover cropping showed more moderate, yet consistently positive results for all factors.

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What kind of perspectives do Iowa farmers have on targeted conservation?A Most of the participating farmers recognized the importance of producing multiple benefi ts (or at least minimizing "bads" such as erosion) but lacked broad-scope information (e.g., nature of various problems and, in turn, what specifi cally to do about them in a low-cost way). There was a tacit acceptance of a targeted approach to conservation, yet considerable uncertainty exists regarding the cost, broad management consequences and the availability of incentives. Incentives that are independent of strict policy initiatives (e.g., driven by the NRCS) may be required to engender more autonomous application of enhanced, outcome-based conservation management that is aligned with targeted conservation; such incentives may well be in the realm of environmental markets and/or Payment for Ecosystem Service opportunities.