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Midwest Research

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Ecosystem Services Research In Communities - Future Midwestern Landscapes Study (PDF) (2 pp, 311KB, About PDF)

Issue

EPA’s Ecological Research Program (ERP) in the Office of Research and Development (ORD) is focused on the study of ecosystem services, or the benefits to human well-being provided by ecological systems.  The ERP is initiating studies of ecosystem services in a number of specific places in the United States to better understand these services, and to develop analytical tools that enable decision makers to take these benefits into account.  

One study will be conducted in the Midwest region, which is critically important in supplying national and global demand for food, fiber, and fuel. Midwestern landscapes also play essential roles in the supply of water to homes and farms, recreation, flood control, and a host of other benefits essential to quality of life.

Bioethanol plants in the US as of May, 2007 and proposed ecosystem services study area.

The rapid growth of the biofuels industry, which uses crops and other biomass to make liquid fuel, is causing changes in agricultural practices and land uses across the U.S., and most strikingly in the Midwest. EPA’s Regional offices are interested in the long-term environmental implications of these changes.  Therefore, the Future Midwestern Landscapes (FML) Study will examine projected changes in landscapes and ecosystem services in the Midwest.  Given its immediate influence, biofuel production will be studied as a primary driver of landscape change.

Science Objectives

The study goals are to:

Application and Impact

For a large area of the Midwest, researchers will work with decision makers and use economic and spatial modeling tools to construct alternative landscapes that reflect different assumptions about biofuels policy, technology, and landscape management over the next 10 – 20 years.

Based on discussions with potential users of study results, including participants in an EPA Region 7 stakeholder forum, two future scenarios are envisioned:

Biofuel Targets Scenario

This scenario is the one implied by current policies emphasizing large increases in biofuels production. It anticipates a ramp-up of biofuels from 2008 to 2022, beginning with increases in corn starch ethanol and later including cellulose-based ethanol, derived from a variety of sources such as corn stover, wood chips and switchgrass. Under this scenario corn production will increase, some lands currently enrolled in conservation programs will revert to cropland, and stover utilization will further augment the pressure on soil and water quality.

Multiple Services Scenario

This scenario envisions incentive policies aimed at encouraging the production of a more balanced set of agricultural commodities and environmentally beneficial outcomes.  Incentives will tend to favor enhanced agronomic and conservation practices and will pay for societal benefits such as water quality, flood control, carbon storage and wildlife production. 

The ecosystem services associated with each alternative landscape will be described and compared.  A base year of 2001 also will be analyzed to capture a realistic, yet recent “pre-biofuels” landscape. For some ecosystem services, descriptions are expected to be highly quantitative and include estimates of monetary value; for others only rough approximations will be possible.  

Evaluating many ecosystem services will require that we draw upon the expertise of other federal agencies.

Ecosystem services we will seek to assess include:

The landscape analysis methods developed for the study will be implemented as a web-based environmental decision toolkit, similar to other toolkits previously created under EPA’s Regional Vulnerability Assessment Program (ReVA). Scientists anticipate that the toolkits will allow users to compare alternative Midwestern futures by examining tradeoffs–that is, changes in the provision of a wide variety of ecosystem services–at both local and regional scales.

For local-scale decision makers, we will also investigate the feasibility of incorporating ecosystem services into two existing software applications.  The first is I-FARM, a popular online tool that integrates crop and livestock production as well as biomass planning.  I-FARM is operated by the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University, and provides a profitability analysis of different crops. 

The second is Purdue University's Long-Term Hydrologic Impact Assessment / Environmental Quality Incentives Program (L-THIA/EQIP), which offers decision support on best management practices to protect water quality.

References:

Liu, Y., M. Mahmoud, H. Hartmann, et al., 2007. Formal scenario development for environmental impact assessment studies, in Jakeman, A., A. Voinov, A. E. Rizzoli, and S. Chen (eds), State of the Art and Futures in Environmental Modeling and Software. Elsevier (accepted).

USDA, 2007. An Analysis of the Effects of an Expansion in Biofuel Demand on U.S. Agriculture. USDA, ERS. 69 pp.

Westcott, P.C., 2007. Ethanol Expansion in the United States: How Will the Agricultural Sector Adjust? USDA FDS-07D-01. 20pp.

Contacts

ORD: Randy Bruins, (bruins.randy@epa.gov) 513-569-7581

Region 7: Brenda Groskinsky, (groskinsky.brenda@epa.gov) 913-551-7188

Region 5: David Macarus, (macarus.david@epa.gov) 312-353-5814

Region 8: Suzanne Stevenson
(stevenson.suzanne@epa.gov) 303-312-6030

 

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