Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture

Leopold Center project studies soil quality

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May 25, 2010

AMES, Iowa --The “next generation” of farming in Iowa could include growing crops or harvesting residue that can be used for energy production. But how do these cropping systems affect soil quality, and could the right combination of crops actually improve Iowa’s fertile soil?

That’s the question that USDA soil scientist Tom Sauer and other researchers want to know. Sauer is working on a soil quality project supported by the Ecology Initiative of the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture. It is part of a larger research project, Comparison of Biofuel Systems, in the ISU College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

This Leopold Center-supported research is in its second year of a three-year project. Its goal is to find out how different types of vegetation and a diversity of vegetation alter the quality of the soil.

“The way we’ve used soil up to this point has put it in a stable, yet degraded state,” said Sauer, a researcher at the National Laboratory for Agriculture and the Environment in Ames. “If we change the way we use it, the soil structure and the properties it affects are going to change and have an impact on its usage in the future.”

“It used to be thought that these changes occurred over extremely long periods of time like centuries, but recent research has shown that we can repair or improve the current soil condition, possibly within decades, by using it in different manner.”

The design of the experiment is four replications of six different treatments: corn-soybean grain system (both crops each growing season); a continuous corn for grain and stover, with and without a winter cover crop; and a multispecies reconstructed prairie, with and without fertilizer.

“By using the different treatments, we can see for each how the root architecture holds the soil together, how the plants are exploiting the resources that are there, and returning important nutrients to the soil.”

Measurements of the soil aeration, soil water regime, soil organic carbon concentrations, greenhouse gas fluxes, soil structure, and plant rooting characteristics are being taken.

The secondary goal is to simulate the soil ecosystem’s response to changing land use and potential climate change. The data gathered will be used to develop software that can model this response, a tool that can be used for educational purposes and to help farmers make decisions about land use based on soil needs. 

For more info contact:

Tom Sauer, USDA-ARS NLAE, (515) 294-3416, tom.sauer@ars.usda.gov

Jeri Neal, Leopold Center Ecology Initiative, (515) 294- 5610, wink@iastate.edu

or Laura Miller, Leopold Center Communications, (515) 294- 5272, lwmiller@iastate.edu 

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