Irrigated agriculture accounts for 90 percent of consumptive use of freshwater in the western US and is considered the largest contributor to nonpoint source water pollution. The diffuse nature of most water quality and quantity challenges necessitates institutions that can more effectively engage agricultural producers in strategic, integrated, watershed-scale approaches...
The greater sage-grouse, an iconic ground-dwelling bird of the West, has experienced significant population declines during the past 50 years from habitat loss. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) designated sage grouse in 2010 as a candidate for listing under the Endangered Species Act (ESA).
In September 2015, the...
INR’s long-term goal with this and other projects is to help revitalize rural economies and contribute to rural sustainability, while increasing ecosystem restoration and thoughtfully developing ecosystem services markets. To assist in meeting these goals, this project aims to understand and overcome a significant hurdle on the supply side of...
Restoration to achieve Stage 0 is a valley-scale, process-based (hydrologic, geologic and biological) approach that aims to reestablish stream depositional environments to maximize longitudinal, lateral, and vertical connectivity at base flows and facilitate development of dynamic, self-formed and self-sustaining wetland-stream complexes. The term Stage 0 originally described complex multi-channel conditions...
Pine Creek Conservation Area (PCCA), just northeast of the John Day River in Wheeler County, Oregon, was acquired in 1999-2001 by the Confederate Tribes of Warm Springs with support from the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA), to mitigate for wildlife losses created by the large, hydropower Columbia River Dams, particularly the...
This report is laid out as a progressive exploration of how the economics of ES production interacts with finance, broadly construed, in actual credit transactions. The inquiry proceeds in several steps. First, the economics of ecosystem services production is explored to provide critical context for potential financing approaches. This section...
Ecosystem services markets represent potential revenue streams for small- and medium-scale rural agricultural and forest producers, many of whom have faced significant economic downturns over the past several decades. Demand for ecosystem services (ES) in the form of investments by public agencies, mitigation funds from regulated entities, and voluntary payments...