BE/CNH: Impact of Economics-Driven Land-Use Decisions on Watershed Health

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Agriculture is the dominant human influence over most of the world's land surface, including nearly a million square miles in the U.S. Agriculture has changed the structure and function of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems dramatically, so that far from being self-regulating and in equilibrium, agroecosystems depend heavily on non-renewable inputs. Their comparative simplicity makes agroecosystems much less nutrient conservative than their natural counterparts. Furthermore, agroecosystems are a major source of nutrient loading and subsequent loss of biodiversity to aquatic systems worldwide. While complexity in agroecosystems often is low biophysically, these systems are much more complex when the human socio-economic systems are included. Ultimately it is this complex system of human values, beliefs, and social constructs, including economics, that determine the ecological structure and function of agroecosystems. Efforts to restore ecological function to agricultural landscapes will be successful only if they include both the human and biophysical dimensions of these systems. During the past three years, a multidisciplinary team of ecological and social scientists has been developing a framework and approach to agroecosystem restoration that integrates both natural and social capital required for effective restoration of ecological function to the Sugar Creek Watershed in northeast Ohio. The objectives of this research planning grant are: (1) to benchmark the social, physical, and ecological features of the headwater tributaries that most directly relate to understanding the linkages between managed terrestrial and aquatic systems; (2) to create increased awareness of watershed ecology, and motivate farmers to use, and others to encourage the use of agricultural practices that improve water quality, and (3) to restore biodiversity and ecosystem function on a tributary by tributary basis of whole landscapes including both agricultural and non-agricultural areas. The planning process will focus on bringing in additional investigators with expertise in key areas, developing the necessary experiments and data sets on which to build plans for a fuller project, and expanding an education component that ultimately will integrate student participation into the project and further link researchers, farmers, and students in a learning process.Increasing biocomplexity from microbial to human interaction scales in primary headwater watersheds will enhance the social and economic sustainability of agroecosystems and will decrease agriculture's ecological impact. Only by integrating the social dynamics among neighboring farmers as a community will the ecological compatibility between terrestrial and aquatic systems be improved. In the long-term, the investigators expect to evaluate the impact of restored and unrestored headwaters on downstream areas through permanent monitoring stations. They also expect to use the data from these on-site experiments to model impacts at sub-basin and overall watershed levels. The restorations examined through this project will serve as a primary focal point for developing the research framework and team-building efforts. Longer-term educational efforts include training for elementary and secondary school teachers. Farmers from the Sugar Creek watershed will present case studies on agriculture and their restoration efforts to school and other lay audiences. Future emphasis will be on using ecological processes as management strategies at field, farm, and community/subwatershed scales. This project is supported by an award resulting from the FY 2003 special competition in Biocomplexity in the Environment focusing on the Dynamics of Coupled Natural and Human Systems.