Agricultural systems basically depend on ecological processes and services provided by ecosystems. These ecological processes and services, called ecosystem services or environmental services, relate to the conditions and processes through which ecosystems sustain human life by supplying provisions (food, timber, fiber and fuel production), regulation (of water, of climate, protection against droughts, flooding, storms, spread of diseases and soil degradation, waste purification), support (hydrologic cycles, soil formation, nutrient cycling and primary production, which are fundamental for growth and production) and culture (aesthetics, education and recreation).
Landscape changes aimed at increasing food production result in increased provision services, but also in adverse ecological alterations, with simultaneous loss and degradation of support services. In Brazil, the expansion of land needed for crops and pastures required the conversion of native land and the modification of its use ‒ the main source of environmental problems in the country, alongside the issues of carbon emissions, water conservation, and biodiversity conservation. On the other hand, public policy can be created to offer financial benefits to farmers who employ land use systems that preserve ecosystem services. Economic theory often considers such services to be public assets and positive externalities. Due to the limitations of valuation methods in assessing the value of ecosystem functions, most times they are either inadequately assessed or undervalued. Monetary valuation of ecosystem services is a tool which allows the positive externalities induced by these services to be internalized.
Given these factors, this project proposes the following hypothesis: there is a direct link between the type and intensity of land use and the quantity and quality of ecosystem services generated. Therefore, the projects aims to assess parameters, elaborate environmental indicators, and value ecosystem services in different land use systems, from preserved natural forests through agroforestry systems and forest monocultures to the opposite extreme, annual crop monocultures. The parameters to be assessed are associated with ecosystem services such as the preservation of water quality and pollution control, regulation of surface and ground water flow and preservation of soil fertility. The elaboration of environmental indicators will support calculations for the economic valuation of the environmental benefits of natural and managed systems. The assessment and modeling of this relationship will support calculations to value the ecosystem services provided in the different types of land use.