High-resolution trade-off analysis and optimization of ecosystem services and disservices in agricultural landscapes

Agricultural land management often involves trade-offs between ecosystem services (ES) and disservices (EDS). Balancing these trade-offs to achieve low-impact production of agricultural commodities requires rigorous approaches for quantifying and optimizing ES and EDS, reconciling biophysical constraints and different management objectives. In this study, we demonstrate a high-resolution spatially-explicit analysis of ES and EDS trade-offs for irrigated corn production systems in the South Platte River Basin, Colorado, USA, as a case study. The analysis integrated a biogeochemical model (DayCent) with optimization algorithms to assess trade-offs between multiple ES and EDS indicators, including net primary production, soil organic carbon, water use, nitrogen leaching, and greenhouse gas emissions. Our results show a large fraction of total potential system productivity (up to 21 Mg ha−1 year−1) can be realized at minimal ecosystem impacts through careful land management decisions. Our analysis also explores how different land management objectives imply different landscape configurations.