Quantifying co-production in agricultural landscapes to advance ecosystem service flow accounts

Ecosystem service (ES) flows are the contributions of natural inputs to societal benefits. ES flows are often combined with other inputs to produce those benefits and can be mediated by other factors. In agricultural landscapes, wild pollination, grassland productivity, and precipitation are major natural inputs that contribute to crop yield, livestock production, and consumptive use of water by agriculture, respectively. These agricultural benefits are co-produced with natural (biotic and abiotic), human-derived, and landscape characteristics. Quantifying how these flows contribute to the p roduction of benefits is necessary to understand their value to society. Our goal is to demonstrate how landscapes and associated ES flows can be calculated from data compiled for national ecosystem accounts to facilitate policy design. We identified ES and non-ES inputs, categorized as natural, human, and landscape characteristics, that contribute to the production of agricultural benefits. Using statistical panel models and earth observation and administrative data from 2010, 2015, and 2020, we estimated the relative contributions of ES inputs in the agricultural region in Saskatchewan, Canada. Our results suggest that, for wild pollination, a 1% increase in the proportion of natural habitats surrounding canola increases canola productivity by 0.26 bushels/acre (0.7% of 2010 yield) after accounting for human and abiotic inputs/landscape characteristics. For grasslands, on average every metric ton of grassland and pasture productivity contributes to 4 more animal units per 1000 acres of pasture. Agricultural water availability increases by 0.58 mm for each additional millimeter of precipitation. We use these marginal estimates from our statistical models to predict agricultural benefits under different management strategies. Using publicly available data and a co-production framework, our results reflect the beneficial flows from different agroecosystem areas. Our conceptual framework and estimation steps contribute to the consistent and systematic implementation of internationally recognized principles for valuing ES and ecosystem assets.