Ecosystem Services in Working Lands of the Southeastern USA

Abstract

Agriculture and natural systems interweave in the southeastern US, including Florida, Georgia, and Alabama, where topographic, edaphic, hydrologic, and climatic gradients form nuanced landscapes. These are largely working lands under private control, comprising mosaics of timberlands, grazinglands, and croplands. According to the “ecosystem services” framework, these landscapes are multifunctional. Generally, working lands are highly valued for their provisioning services, and to some degree cultural services, while regulating and supporting services are harder to quantify and less appreciated. Trade-offs and synergies exist among these services. Regional ecological assessments tend to broadly paint working lands as low value for regulating and supporting services. But this generalization fails to consider the complexity and tight spatial coupling of land uses and land covers evident in such regions. The challenge of evaluating multifunctionality and ecosystem services is that they are not spatially concordant. While there are significant acreages of natural systems embedded in southeastern working lands, their spatial characteristics influence the balance of tradeoffs between ecosystem services at differing scales. To better understand this, we examined the configuration of working lands in the southeastern US by comparing indicators of ecosystem services at multiple scales. Indicators included measurements of net primary production (provisioning), agricultural Nitrogen runoff (regulating), habitat measured at three levels of land use intensity, and biodiversity (supporting). We utilized a hydrographic and ecoregional framework to partition the study region. We compared indicators aggregated at differing scales, ranging from broad ecoregions to local landscapes focused on the USDA Long-Term Agroecosystem Research (LTAR) Network sites in Florida and Georgia. Subregions of the southeastern US differ markedly in contributions to overall ecosystem services. Provisioning services, characterized by production indicators, were very high in northern subregions of Georgia, while supporting services, characterized by habitat and biodiversity indicators, were notably higher in smaller subregions of Florida. For supporting services, the combined contributions of low intensity working lands with embedded natural systems made a critical difference in their regional evaluation. This analysis demonstrated how the inclusion of working lands combined with examining these at different scales shifted our understanding of ecosystem services trade-offs and synergies in the southeastern United States.

Impact of plant diversity and management intensity on magnitude and stability of productivity in North American grazing lands

“…Grazing lands, which encompass grasslands, prairies, steppes, savannas, pastures, and shrublands, provide critical ecosystem services including provisioning, supporting, regulating services, and cultural services (Gitay et al, 2001;Eastburn et al, 2017;Dubeux et al, 2022). Primary productivity is a key component of provisioning services in grazing lands (Coffin et al, 2021) with 17% of the world population dependent on grazing-land productivity for their wellbeing (WRI, 2000). Because anthropogenic changes are affecting grazing lands and the services they provide (Teague & Barnes, 2017;Sollenberger et al, 2019), numerous studies have explored how abiotic and biotic factors drive grazing-land productivity and its stability over time among and across biomes.…”

“…However, the sensitivity of productivity to variation in precipitation or temperature differs between ecosystems (Huxman et al, 2004;Piao et al, 2014) and with management practices (Coffin et al, 2021).…”

“…It is well known that primary productivity is affected by both temperature (Myneni et al., 1998) and precipitation (Lauenroth & Sala, 1992; Knapp & Smith, 2001). However, the sensitivity of productivity to variation in precipitation or temperature differs between ecosystems (Huxman et al., 2004; Piao et al., 2014) and with management practices (Coffin et al., 2021).…”

Increased Nitrogen Retention and Reduced Methane Emissions of Beef Cattle Grazing Legume vs. Grass Irrigated Pastures in the Mountain West USA

“…The sustainability of U.S. agriculture is threatened by the degradation and/or loss of ecosystem services due to global warming and anthropogenic interventions such as reduced biological diversity; water and air pollution; and loss of soil quality [1][2][3]. The sustainability of beef production has come under considerable scrutiny given increased concerns over the use of cereal grain for livestock feed [4,5] and the contributions of CH 4 and N 2 O from livestock production to global warming [6].…”