May 10, 2022
The following has been excerpted/adapted from the full posting on Connect Extension, written by Rose Hayden-Smith, available here.
A new report –Ecosystem Services in Working Lands Practice and Policy of the U.S. Northeast – has been added to the Extension Foundation’s bookshelf.
Authored by Northeast Ecosystems Services Fellows Alicia F. Coleman, PhD, and Mario R. Machado, PhD, the report documents results from an assessment of over 1,300 ecosystem service provisioning programs and policies across the U.S. Northeast (Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, and West Virginia, as well as in the District of Columbia.)
The assessment describes the programs’ institutional arrangements, their incentive structures, and the ecosystem services they provide. The analysis is the first step of a long term process developed by the Association of Northeast Extension Directors (NEED) and Northeastern Regional Association of State Agricultural Experiment Station Directors (NERA) in collaboration with the Northeast Regional Center for Rural Development to advance and support the delivery and valuation of ecosystem services on working lands in the Northeast.
The assessment builds the capacity of Cooperative Extension and the Agricultural Research Station system’s work in supporting producers to deliver ecosystem services on working lands. In addition to providing analysis, a linked database captures a time-bound dataset that can be filtered by state.
- Read the full posting excerpted above on Connect Extension here.
- View and share the Landscape Assessment.
Join the Fellows for an interactive webinar about the assessment, recommendations, and opportunities grow from the work on May 24, 2022; 2:00 PM- 3:00 PM ET. Register here.
NEED and NERA, with advisory support from the Northeastern Regional Center for Rural Development, will build on the information in the report by hosting a series of regional listening sessions (dates and information TBA). The goal of these sessions will be to gather impressions on the research and to identify clear work that needs to be completed by Extension and the Agricultural Experiment Stations, and NERCRD in collaboration with local, regional, and federal government, non-profit, and private partners, to advance the delivery and valuation of ecosystem services on working lands in the northeast.
Contact Ali Mitchell ([email protected]) for more information.