Valuing Ecosystem Services in the Agricultural Sector
Authors:
Functioning ecosystems in the vicinity of agricultural production plots can provide a range of ecosystem goods and services that act as implicit inputs to agricultural commodity production. For example, stands of native vegetation can provide services such as crop pollination, soil retention and water table control.
Similarly healthy riparian ecosystems can provide improved irrigation water quality (an ecosystem good). The lack of a market for these services, however, means that incentives to maintain the ecosystems providing them can be lacking.
Valuation studies in a variety of contexts have found that the value of ecosystem services is often substantial, and may be much larger than the cost of maintaining the ecosystem providing them.
The purpose of this project is to value ecosystem services according to their pure economic contribution to agricultural production in Australia.
This project is led by Dr. Emma Aisbett.
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