Leopold Center workshop explores resilience, sustainability

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May 26, 2011

AMES, Iowa -- Farms need to be resilient as well as sustainable to continue producing food, fuel and fiber in an uncertain future marked by erratic weather due to climate change, rising energy costs and other unpredictable shocks in the system.

This advice comes from David Mortensen, professor of weed ecology at Pennsylvania State University, who spoke to more than 80 researchers and educators attending a May 25 workshop hosted by the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture. The goal of the workshop was to learn about resilience and how it might be incorporated into Leopold Center-funded research and demonstrations.

“Resilience is the ability of a system to absorb disturbance and still have all the essential elements it needs to function,” Mortensen said. “We need to identify systems that are resilient and try to expand them.”

Resilience arises from diversity. Mortensen cited an example from Pennsylvania, where orchard growers struggling with widespread bee Colony Collapse Disorder no longer keep their own hives. Instead, they rely on 200 species of wild bees to pollinate peach and apple trees. The wild bees are from surrounding forests and grasslands, and even congregate between the cultivated fruit trees.

Mortensen contrasted that resilient system with Iowa, which has the lowest crop diversity in the United States. He said resilience could be improved with soil management practices or preserving edge-of-field plantings.

Iowa State University agronomist Matt Liebman, who participated in a panel discussion, said he has found in his research that biological diversity promotes tolerance of diseases caused by the effects of climate change. Soybeans grown in longer rotations were less susceptible to Sudden Death Syndrome that has been related to wet weather, than soybeans in a two-year corn-soybean rotation.

“Aldo Leopold told us we need to keep all the parts of the system if its functional integrity is to be maintained,” Liebman said. “We’re losing a lot of parts.”

University of Northern Iowa biologist Laura Jackson addressed the social aspects of resilience in her panel presentation. Researchers need to look critically at data and be resourceful in solving problems. She said Leopold’s notions about the role of predators and using fire to manage forests were management practices that ran counter to conventional views of the world.

Resilience also offers a new – and slightly different – twist to sustainability. Jackson said: “In sustainability we talk about things running out slowly over time. The resilience idea introduces a new concept that because our systems are adaptive and complex, there is a potential for catastrophe to happen that is not directly related to running out of a natural resource.”

Other members of the panel were: Richard Sloan, a farmer from Rowley who’s worked with Iowa State’s performance-based watershed project in Lime Creek; Bahia Barry of Oakland, local food coordinator for the Southwest Iowa Food and Farm Initiative; and moderator Rich Leopold, Assistant Regional Director for Science Application in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (and former director of the Iowa Department of Natural Resources).

Afternoon sessions were spent in small group discussions on ways to measure resilience and its use in potential research and demonstration projects.

Investigators from 20 completed Leopold Center projects prepared posters that summarized their work and showed how they measured sustainability and resilience. Those posters can be viewed in a slideshow on the Leopold Center website at: www.leopold.iastate.edu/news/photos

A video of the keynote presentation and panel discussion also will be posted on the website soon.

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The Leopold Center was established by the 1987 Iowa Groundwater Protection Act as a research and education center at Iowa State University to develop sustainable agricultural practices that are both profitable and conserve natural resources. Iowa State does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, age, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, sex, marital status, disability, or status as a U.S. Vietnam Era Veteran. Any persons having inquiries concerning this may contact the Director of Affirmative Action, 3210 Beardshear Hall, (515) 294-7612.

This page was found at http://www.leopold.iastate.edu/news/05-26-2011/leopold-center-workshop-explores-resilience-sustainability on 01/21/2013