Issue At Hand

There is growing recognition worldwide that the ecosystem services provided through natural ecosystem functions are critical in creating and sustaining productive and resilient societies. Furthermore, ecosystem services are integral to the sustainable agriculture paradigm, which seeks to integrate services such as biological pest control and pollination, water and nutrient cycling, and the prevention of erosion and floods to lower the costs of farming and enhance public benefits associated with agricultural landscapes. As societal demand for ecosystem services intensifies, it is imperative that private landowners, producers, policy makers, and the public can effectively work toward a common vision for these landscapes.

What We Hope to Accomplish

A key barrier to achieving this goal lies in the complexity associated with the provisioning of ecosystem services. The underlying knowledge is hard to communicate, as it is perceived to be complicated, inaccessible, and fraught with uncertainty.

To overcome this communication barrier, we develop and visualize an alternative agricultural landscape scenario with diverse agricultural stakeholders in U.S. Midwest. Scenarios are strategically designed to capitalize on ecosystem services while maintaining high agricultural productivity.

How We Go About It

We conduct a site-specific case study, using input from key stakeholders to design an alternative agricultural landscape scenario. The landscape will be constructed such that it maintains a high agricultural output while meeting ecosystem services expectations through the incorporation of multifunctional agricultural practices. A photorealistic visualization will be developed as a tool for reporting our results to the stakeholders.  Finally, we will test the usefulness of the scenario planning and visualization approaches as communication tools.