Precision agricultural data and ecosystem services: can we put the pieces together?

Ecosystem services can maintain or increase crop yield in agricultural
systems, but data to support management decisions is expensive and
time-consuming to collect. Furthermore, relationships derived from
small-scale plot data may not apply to ecosystem services operating at
larger spatial scales (fields, landscapes). Precision yield data can be
used to improve the accuracy and geographic range of ecosystem service
studies, but have been underused in previous studies: out of 370
literature records, we found that less than 2% of all records were used to
study biotic or landscape effects on yield. We argue that this is likely
due to low data accessibility and a lack of familiarity with spatial data
analysis. We provide examples of analysis using simulated and real
precision yield data and outline two case studies of ecosystem services
using precision yield data. Ecologists and agronomists should consider
using precision yield data more broadly, as it can be used to test
hypotheses about ecosystem services across multiple spatial scales, and
could be used to inform the design of multifunctional farming landscapes.