Tools and Approaches for Measuring Ecosystem Services in California's Grasslands and Oak Woodlands

Created with SARE support
Valerie Eviner | 2017 | 40 pages

Ecosystem services are the benefits humans receive from our natural ecosystems and working landscapes. These services include: forage production, erosion control, soil fertility, water storage, flood control, carbon storage, fire control, pollination, water purification, air purification, and others.

While there is increasing interest in managing landscapes for multiple ecosystem services, very few management and restoration projects monitor their impacts, and thus we have little information on the effectiveness of management practices on ecosystem services.

This project developed a monitoring handbook to increase monitoring efforts across management projects and to provide more consistent types of measurements across studies, which will make monitoring measurements more directly comparable.

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This material is based upon work that is supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, U.S. Department of Agriculture through the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) program. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the view of the U.S. Department of Agriculture or SARE.