Mongabay: In September, the USDA's Natural Resources Conservation Service announced its 2015 round of Conservation Innovation Grants. The agency awarded 45 grants totaling about $20 million for projects to improve soil health and to develop environmental markets.
The environmental markets projects are part of a relatively new approach to conservation known as payment for ecosystem services." The idea is to be able to quantify certain seemingly intangible environmental functions, like carbon sequestration,...