Activity 1.1: Initial stakeholder engagement (Lloyd-Smith / Asselin / Bobiwash / Bennett)

We will engage relevant stakeholders and rightsholder groups to share information on the project, and will elicit and incorporate their ideas into the work plan. We will build off existing relationships and invite new interested parties to a series of workshops held throughout the study region. 

Activity 1.2: Producer perceptions, behavior, and profits (Lloyd-Smith, Pattison-Williams; MSc 1)

The qualitative information and insights gained from the workshops will be complemented by quantitative information from a large-scale survey of producers and an econometric analysis of land prices to better understand behavioral drivers of adoption and to estimate the changes in producer-level profits from restoring native grasslands.

Activity 1.3 Estimate the economic value of societal ecosystem services (Lloyd-Smith; MSc 2)

Understanding the full range of benefits that native grasslands provide society is challenging because most ecosystem services are not associated with market prices. Existing studies have often drawn on secondary valuation estimates that are not locally based or empirically validated, and can provide misleading information on the total and relative economic values of ecosystem services. For biodiversity benefits in particular, there is existing evidence that people benefit from and are willing to pay for conservation of animals and species-at-risk, but less is known about people’s values for plant and insect diversity, especially with respect to conservation of genetic resources. The objective of the ecosystem service valuation activity is to measure the broader economic value of ecosystem services provided by grasslands relative to croplands. The main challenge in this activity will be understanding people's preferences and values for different types of plant, microbial, and insect diversity (genetic, species, and landscape) and linking these values to changes on the landscape. 

Activity 1.4: Assess policies and tradeoffs in ecosystem services provision and agricultural production using an integrated framework (Lloyd-Smith, Pattison-Williams)

The outputs from Act2–4 will be incorporated into an integrated economic framework to assess any tradeoffs in ecosystem services and agricultural production, and to evaluate policy options that incentivize adoption using an integrated framework. The willingness-to-pay benefit estimates will be contrasted against the costs of the management interventions (i.e., changes in producer profits, seed costs associated with increasing native plant species and genetic diversity) and the genomic tools required to assess ecosystem service provisioning. Applying this integrated framework, we will evaluate the ecosystem service implications of alternative agricultural management practices and policies on the landscape and identify priorities for native prairie conservation that can balance provision of ecosystem services with agricultural productivity.