Soil conservation benefits farmers through increased soil productivity. Land conservation benefits recreationalists by preserving biodiversity, including endangered species, fish and wildlife habitats, and landscape views. Land conservation can also reduce sediments, benefiting navigation, reservoirs, irrigation ditches, water-based recreation, fisheries, and water supply. Residents can benefit as property values increase due to aesthetics. Educators and researchers benefit from having habitats for learning purposes.

Soil health is impacted by growing crops and grazing animals, applications of chemicals and fertilizers, tillage, and other practices. Urbanization, development, and land use planning or zoning all influence the amount and quality of available habitat. The type and intensity of recreation can impact the health of the environment. On the other hand, education and restoration activities can improve land stewardship.

Many indicators of land conservation can reveal changes, including measures of soil and substrate health, habitat characteristics, and substrate characteristics. For example, habitat measures include the number of acres and the type of ecosystem protected.

Soil measures include organic matter, infiltration capacity, pH, nutrients, topsoil depth, microbial diversity, texture, productivity, and quantity. These measures reflect the ability of soils to sustain plant growth and biodiversity, and to retain water and act as carbon sinks. Learning of any pollutants in the soil is also important.

A change in the amount and type of land that is conserved impacts the many benefits people receive from land-based ecosystems. Some examples include:

• Land conservation can have an economic impact by improving soil health, and therefore improving farming, grazing, and forestry productivity. It also increases tourism and recreation and provides water management benefits (such as water filtration and flooding reduction) thereby increasing resilience to and protection from extreme events. Reduced erosion and sedimentation benefits infrastructure such as reservoirs, shipping channels, irrigation and road drainage ditches, water treatment plants, and fisheries.
• Land ecosystems promote health, as vegetation and forests help reduce greenhouse gas emissions by sequestering carbon, and improve air quality. Land conservation can also help promote health by providing more opportunities for physical recreation, and quality of life by preserving aesthetic and cultural values associated with land.
• Habitat preservation supports biodiversity and therefore contributes to associated benefits, such as pollination.

Economists use both market and non-market methods to value land conservation. An example of a market-based valuation method is using land prices, replacement costs, damage functions, and averting behavior. Non-market valuation for land conservation includes the travel cost method and contingent valuation method.