Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture

Completed Competitive Grant

Variations in water and nutrient cycling and soil properties during agricultural landscape restoration

Project ID: 2004-E14

Abstract

The research team examined differences in nutrient, water and carbon storage and output for selected mixtures of annual and perennial plant communities. The research was set up in 14 small sub-watersheds managed by the U.S. Forest Service as part of the Neal Smith National Wildlife Refuge near Prairie City, Iowa. Each sub-watershed had a different placement of prairie conservation strips within crop fields. The project has continued as part of the "perennializers" working group, also known as the "Science-based Trials of Row Crops Integrated with Prairies" or STRIPs research team.

Lead investigator: Heidi Asbjornsen, ISU Natural Resource Ecology and Management

Co-Investigator(s):

Matt Helmers, ISU Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering; Matt Liebman, ISU Agronomy; Lisa Schulte-Moore, ISU Natural Resource Ecology and Management; and Randy Kolka, USDA Forest Service, North Central Research Station

Year of grant completion: 2009

This competitive grant project was part of the Leopold Center's Ecology Initiative.

Topics: Corn-soybean cropping systems, Farming systems, Watershed and ecoregion