#785: Dr. Marian Weber: Indian Farm Creek Ecosystem Services Study
Indian Farm Creek is a small watershed of 14 thousand hectares in southern Alberta near Pincher Creek.
Only 2 percent of the region is natural habitat. The rest is taken up by agriculture.
This is where economist Dr. Marian Weber of Alberta Innovates is testing the concepts of ecosystem services and tradable offsets to encourage better land management.
DR MARIAN WEBER: So our objective in this project was to develop and test some integrated science in decision support tools for the evaluation of BMP’s. So these are "Beneficial Management Practices" on things like biodiversity and water quality and quantity. A BMP would be something like nutrient management. And then the other part of the project is looking at what would be the opportunities for producers to actually receive payments for undertaking these practices, which are a cost to them. And so if society benefits from water quality improvements, then is there some way to transfer those benefits back to producers?
Dr. Marian Weber says this information will develop the science to encourage a market for ecosystem services.
Thanks today to ALBERTA INNOVATES
Learn more at Innovation Anthology.com
I’M CHERYL CROUCHER
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Alberta Innovates Technology Futures
Alberta Innovates launched its consolidation on November 1, 2016
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Program Date: 2016-05-26