Researchers protect environment, human and animal health with natural capital

Everyone knows the importance of farmland. These precious fields give us the food we need to survive and are relied on here in Canada and around the world. But did you know that agricultural landscapes can also help reduce the effects of the climate crisis, save endangered birds, and even reduce the spread of West Nile virus?

Working in what they call an "Environmental Change One Health Observatory" (ECO²), lead researchers from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada are collaborating with their counterparts at other federal departments and agencies, along with industry, agricultural producers, non-government organizations, and academia, to learn about the many ways agricultural activities interact with the environment and human health. Together, they’re studying the benefits, trade-offs and value of natural capital – the Earth’s natural resources and features which include riparian zones (lands next to bodies of water), wetlands, drainage networks and edge-of-field areas like tree lines and hedgerows. In agroecosystems, these landscape features can provide a number of ecological benefits, like protecting soil and water quality, sequestering carbon, and encouraging greater biodiversity. But how exactly do these natural features impact the local community, local wildlife or the farmer’s bottom line?

What sets this project apart is the "One Health" approach, a holistic view that takes into account environmental, human, and animal health all at once. This project brings together different stakeholders to develop sustainable on-farm practices and innovative tools to meet the One Health criteria, while sustaining and boosting productivity on the farm.

Clues to more resilient agroecosystems

As part of the ECO² project, the team has turned to long-term research on the agriculturally dominant landscape of the South Nation Watershed, located 40 minutes south of Ottawa, Ontario. There, they’ve been collecting almost every piece of data imaginable – soil and water quality, greenhouse gas emissions, pests, pollinators, other invertebrates (bugs), and more – to gain a holistic understanding of the local environment and the interactions within it.

To pursue one of the main activities within the ECO² project, the team then asked for help and approval from local farmers and the municipality to explore the consequences of channel dredging and removal of the natural vegetation (trees, shrubs) around selected drainage ditches – farming practices routinely used to improve field drainage and enhance crop production.

"We wanted to find out what happens when you severely reduce natural capital in an agro-ecosystem. What changes in the context of ecosystem services? What rebounds and disappears? What positive benefits emerge?" asks Dr. David Lapen, the Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada researcher at the helm of ECO².

So far, their results have shown how:

• Ecosystems lining the edge of farm fields can help sequester carbon, dissipate pesticides, purify water, and absorb excess nutrients.
• Natural and semi-natural features around the farm (for example, shelterbelts, riparian areas) can be biodiversity hotspots, where they maintain food webs that support wildlife. These hotspots also support beneficial insects such as pollinators, insects that help regulate vector-borne diseases, and natural predators to pests.
• Forage and grasslands provide a number of ecosystem services, including strengthening soil structure and reducing flood peaks.
• Improved soil health can lower pesticide and fertilizer use, while boosting crop productivity.

All of this data is being turned into modelling and decision-making tools that will help predict how changes to these landscape features – whether environmental or man-made – will impact greenhouse gas emissions, the spread of crop pathogens, vector-borne diseases, and more. Maybe even predict water quality from space.

"Prediction is a cornerstone of mitigation… These predictive tools can also be applied to improve our ability to estimate carbon sequestration across the country and produce data to benefit sectors beyond agriculture, including, forestry, energy and the environment."

- Dr. David Lapen, Research Scientist, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada

The beginnings of a water model

Dr. Hazen Russell is a researcher with the Geological Survey of Canada at Natural Resources Canada. He and Dr. Steve Frey of Aquanty Inc. in Ontario have been leading on the next generation of predictive tools to show how climate and landscape changes are affecting ecosystem services related to water resources in the ground and on the surface. One goal is to help farmers and other stewards of the land respond to threats like drought and effects of excessive precipitation before they happen.

"In many areas, groundwater is the most accessible source of water for agricultural irrigation or livestock," Hazen says. By fine-tuning a model developed for, and used by the South Nation Conservation Authority to manage watershed resources, their modeling work is already helping producers and watershed managers better understand how water resources are being stressed and how to proactively manage them. And that is just one part of it. The team has taken big steps towards predicting not only water resource dynamics, but forecasting pathogens and agrochemical levels in these watersheds in real-time.

Their work at the South Nation Watershed also formed the basis for another project known as Canada1Water (C1W). Also led by Hazen and Steve, C1W is one of the largest and most comprehensive hydroclimate-based decision support systems developed to date, for all of Canada.

"ECO² and C1W are linked from a practical perspective of wanting to understand the role of groundwater within an agricultural watershed," says Hazen. It’s helped researchers better understand the ecosystem services provided by groundwater, like supporting crops, purifying water, cycling nutrients and mitigating the effects of floods and drought on crops.

"Every year in the South Nation watershed for example, Steve and his ECO² team estimated that groundwater from an ecosystem services perspective was valued at over $300 million in benefits to humans and ecosystems – just from a 4,000 sq km basin," David adds. "That value is greater than $400 million during drought years. We should be valuing groundwater a little more and protecting it."

The benefits can be wild

For Dr. Donald Baird and his team at Environment and Climate Change Canada, they’re looking at how farm activities affect ecosystem support services for wildlife in and around the agricultural drainage ditches.

"We think these humble ditches are really important," he says, "not just for biodiversity, but the wildlife itself can provide important ecosystem services for farmers."

The ditches are home to aquatic insects which provide a key food source for breeding birds, including warblers and tree swallows that are rapidly declining in Canada and around the world. These birds depend on ditch systems to provide critical nutrients such as essential fatty acids to fledglings, and the surrounding riparian vegetation provides shaded areas for birds to perch and forage for food.

Working with ECCC colleague Dr. Greg Mitchell, their research team has set up nesting boxes to see how farm activities are affecting fledgling health. They’re also expanding their study to look for changes to algae, fish and the ecosystem’s food web. Healthy ecosystems can support natural predators of crop pests, protect pollinating insects and reduce pollution from excess nutrients. Protecting biodiversity and agricultural productivity can go hand in hand.

"We’re looking at how you can minimize the more extreme intervention practices while still helping farmers to retain the benefits of the landscape, permitting wildlife to thrive in those edge habitats between the fields."

- Dr. Donald Baird, Research Scientist, Environment and Climate Change Canada

Modelling vector-borne diseases

Dr. Nicholas Ogden and his team at the Public Health Agency of Canada are building tools that will help predict the risk of mosquito-borne diseases like West Nile Virus that are mediated by climate and land use changes.

"The abundance of mosquitoes and animal hosts that maintain the infection in nature both depends on the landscape and the habitat," he says.

For instance, an environment with more trees may be cooler, slowing down mosquito biting activity and breeding. Less intensively managed landscapes with more diverse vegetation seem to favour bird species that cannot transmit West Nile.

"This [project] is getting a better handle on those environmental determinants of where, when or how you get a lot of mosquitoes that are able to transmit West Nile or other diseases," he says. The trees and plants, the soil structure and the weather – all this has an impact.

By analyzing the different mosquitoes and birds visiting the ECO² site and combining this information with the larger group’s environmental data, their predictive models will help forecast disease risks based on changes in the environment (for example, climate change) and other human activities (for example, urbanization).

"Natural capital has a great impact on the risk of the diseases to which we're exposed, and how we change them has impacts on the disease risks," he says.

One Health for multidisciplinary solutions

By working together, the researchers are able to pool their resources and data, all while sharing their expertise and coming up with holistic solutions that look at the issues from all sides.

"The idea about One Health is that environmental, human and animal health are all interdependent,” Nick says. “We hope that this is a model for the future as we understand the big challenges of climate change and the need for us to maintain natural capital that protects us and nourishes us with quality foods, clean water, clean air and freedom from disease risks."

Next, the researchers will be looking to develop new ECO² sites for a greater understanding of farmscapes across Canada.

"What features in these landscapes are going to optimize all the major ecosystem services that we are interested in?" David asks.

Whether it’s for the benefit of environmental, human or animal health, this research team is leaving no stone unturned in protecting and strengthening the resiliency of agricultural landscapes.

Quick facts

• Drawing on expertise from across multiple federal departments and sector stakeholders, the Environmental Change One Health Observatory is creating holistic sustainable management practices for agro-ecosystems that not only benefit farmers but improve the health of the environment, humans, and animals.
• This observatory makes use of the resources naturally provided by agro-ecosystems known as natural capital (for example, water, soil, air), focusing on natural landscape features such as wetlands, riparian strips and tree lines.
• By combining their efforts, project participants and researchers are able to draw conclusions from a treasure-trove of data and create next-generation predictive tools to help farmers and decision-makers take proactive steps.
• Led by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, ECO² involves a number of collaborating federal departments and agencies including Environment and Climate Change Canada, the Public Health Agency of Canada, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, Natural Resources Canada and the Canadian Museum of Nature.

Photo gallery

Related information

• The First Sixteen Podcast - Episode 024 - Modelling the future of water
• Canada1Water
• David R. Lapen, Ph.D.