Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture

Current Competitive Grant

Providing shaded pasture with perennial biomass energy plantings

NOTE: Work on this grant project has been completed and is awaiting a final report.

Project ID: E2008-01

This 3-year grant for $6,192 was awarded in 2008.

Location: Polk county

On-farm trials continue for agroforestry techniques to improve pastures (silvo-pasture) with tree shade and additional forage while producing woody biomass. Investigators will evaluate the mid-rotation growth phase of one cycle of woody biomass harvest and alley-cropped hay production, which is then converted to shaded pasture. They also will look at the continued success of initial tilling, a weed mat cover and mowing for hay in reducing competition between planted poplars and red clover/orchard grass pasture.

Rick Hall

Rick Hall Rick Hall is the Wallace Professor of Forestry in ISU's Department of Natural Resource Ecology and Management. His expertise is in tree genetics and silviculture, and current research focuses on the selection of genetically improved cottonwoods, aspens and other tree species for use in the biofuels and new wood products industries. Hall was the lead PI on a project to develop poplar clones for the Midwest Region under the USDOE Biofuels Development Program. He was the 2007 recipient of the College Diversity Enhancement Award and a former chair of the Interdepartmental Genetics Program. Hall teaches courses in renewable resources, silviculture and genecology. [Contact lead investigator]

Co-Investigator(s):

Jesse Randall, ISU Extension, and Ronald D. Abbott, landowner

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

Topics: Bioeconomy and energy, Watershed and ecoregion