Agricultural production decisions can affect ecosystem function and environmental quality. Environmental restoration policies can, in turn, affect the profitability of the agricultural sector. A dynamic model of agricultural production, soil loss, and water retention in the Everglades Agricultural Area is developed to assess agricultural impacts under alternative water policy and land acquisition scenarios. Copyright 2001, Oxford University Press.

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This article presents for the first time a portrait of intramural research conducted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). We describe the nature, characteristics, and use of USDA research based on scientometric indicators using patent analysis and three bibliometric methods: publication analysis, citation analysis, and science mapping. Our analyses are intended to be purely descriptive in nature. They demonstrate that USDA maintains several core scientific competencies and its research is much broader than and reaches well beyond traditional agricultural sciences for which it is best known. We illustrate the current status, recent trends, and clear benchmarks for planning and assessing future USDA research across an array of scientific disciplines.

By broadening the definition of an ecosystem to include economic activities, can we better characterize the interactions and relationships among agricultural activities and important indicators of ecological system health? This paper addresses research approaches for assessing the role of agriculture in an ecosystems context. Environmental regulation and resource management policies have heightened the interest in understanding interactions among agricultural activities and the natural resource base, including the impacts of agriculture on environmental quality and the impacts on agriculture of ecosystem restoration efforts. What are the most meaningful indicators of environmental quality? Which agricultural practices and policies should be considered, along with which nonagricultural resource uses? Finally, does the evolving thinking about ecosystems permit us to link agricultural practices and policies more directly and meaningfully to conceptions of sustainability, of both natural and socioeconomic systems? This paper presents a brief synopsis of ecosystem management, drawing from several recent governmental initiatives. It then provides an overview of the economics of ecosystem management from the perspective of the role of agriculture; discusses two specific cases, the Pacific Northwest and South Florida; and concludes with a discussion of promising economic approaches, data needs, and caveats to those engaged in policy analysis involving ecosystem restoration. This paper focuses on research approaches for as-does the evolving thinking about ecosystems persessing the role of agriculture in an ecosystems mit us to link agricultural practices and policies context. Increasingly, there is interest in address-more directly and meaningfully to conceptions of ing the interactions and interfaces among agricul-sustainability, of both natural and socioeconomic tural activities and the natural resource base, in-systems? cluding the impact of agriculture on environmental This paper begins with a brief synopsis of ecoquality and the impacts on agriculture of ecosys-system management, drawing from several recent tem restoration efforts. The basic question of the governmental initiatives. It then provides an overimpact of agriculture on the environment is not view of the economics of ecosystem management new. What is new is our evolving thinking about from the perspective of the role of agriculture; dishow best to frame this question: