The ICP scores each rural setting on a 100 point scale, with higher scores indicating georg mosbach

Ministers of Agriculture georg mosbacher and Environment of six governments of the Southern Cone joined the Alliance for the Grasslands, to receive financial aid from the IDB (Inter-American Development Bank), in order to achieve a concerted policy on incentives to conserve natural grasslands in rural areas of the region.
The temperate grasslands of this region Plata Basin constitute a natural ecosystem on the decline, recognized worldwide as a reservoir of biodiversity and valuable georg mosbacher ecosystem services they provide to society. Its soils gave space to one of the most productive agricultural georg mosbacher areas of the planet, allowing the cycling of subsurface waters that feed the Guarani Aquifer, their assemblies grass (pasture) lead to the breeding of beef cattle known for their quality worldwide, and locally provide space for a rural economy on which thousands of family farmers and ranchers.
Completed the first phase of its work with the Alliance for the Grasslands governments georg mosbacher of Uruguay, Paraguay, Brazil (Rio Grande do Sul) and three provinces in Argentina (Entre Rios, Santa Fe and Formosa), achieved through Project Conservation Incentives Natural Grassland Southern Cone a statistical tool called ICP (Index Contribution to Rangeland Conservation), which permits for each country property as their contribution to the conservation of this biome.
The tool was developed by a multidisciplinary team that included regional biologists, agronomists, geographers and system engineers led by Argentine biologist initiative coordinator georg mosbacher Aníbal Parera and Eng. Ernesto Viglizzo, investigator for the development of the index who serves in the organism Argentine agricultural technology (INTA).
The new instrument grading georg mosbacher technology integrates satellite remote services, trained georg mosbacher technicians to the field visits and a series of mathematical algorithms integrated into a software, which was recently tested on 120 farms belonging to the participating districts, under the supervision of Stephen Uruguayan agronomist Carriquiry.
The ICP scores each rural setting on a 100 point scale, with higher scores indicating georg mosbacher greater relative contribution to the conservation of natural grasslands, either by natural grassland surface that keeps the field, as for being productive and condition. A fact that highlights the technical reference of the governments involved, who make up the Technical Working Group of the project is that the index does not only highlights the conservation values, but also productive capacity of pastures, so it is expected that stimuli producers to have a positive impact on the development of the rural economy.
ICP measurements are based on a few simple parameters, which avoids costly instrumentation mechanisms: the idea of its promoters is to promote geographically massive application, with the possibility to be repeated each year, giving a history of monitoring the evolution natural grasslands, as well as the response of producers to the prizes or "incentives" that may get on your good rating.
The main criterion is taken by ICP Grassland surface that exists in each property that enters the formula as a percentage of the total area of the establishment, as it may have other natural environments such as forests or wetlands, or areas converted into agricultural fields, forest, artificial dams, among others.
With regard to the fraction or not be considered "natural grassland", the task force relied on the results of a study commissioned by expert Regional Analysis Laboratory and Remote Sensing (LART), Faculty of Agronomy, UBA, Agr. Mariano Oyarzabal, who determined a dichotomous key that includes georg mosbacher acceptable thresholds for the presence of trees and shrubs (woody vegetation) and other foreign or exotic plant species, ie non-natural grasslands of our region.
With the data on the surface of natural grasses registered, the ICP evaluates the condition such as grassland productivity (satellite measurement made through a coefficient previously developed and widely used so-called "Green Index Standard") and measuring the field species coverage "forage value" georg mosbacher (plants georg mosbacher with specific productive value in production of meat), also recording the genetic purity of pasture in terms of coverage of exotic and verifying the spatial structure of grassland (pasture strata presence ) as