Leopold Center Ecology Initiative Working Groups

The Perennializers

NEW PUBLICATION: The Leopold Center Ecology Initiative is supporting a team of Iowa State University researchers that has written a new peer-reviewed publication, A Targeted Conservation Approach for Improving Environmental Quality [PDF], encouraging the strategic use of trees, prairies and other perennials in key parts of the landscape. For more information see the news release or listen to a radio interview about the research project.

This working group began as a small research project funded by the Leopold Center at the Neal Smith National Wildlife Refuge in Jasper County and has grown to become a watershed-scale replicated experiment led by an interdisciplinary team of 14 scientists from five different institutions and seven academic departments.

Short-term goals:
> Quantify the effects on sediment and nutrient loss when marginal lands are converted from perennial cover (such as acres enrolled in the Conservation Reserve Program) to row crops, and
> Assess the environmental benefits accrued through the strategic incorporation of perennial vegetation in agroecosystems.

Long-term goal:
> Improve knowledge among producers, managers and policy makers that will lead to more effective management of agricultural lands for both yield and ecosystem services important to society.

The Ecology Initiative and the USDA Forest Service provided initial project funding, now supplemented by resources from the ISU College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and the National Science Foundation. 

 

Green Lands, Blue Water (GLBW)

Cover crops: Sarah Carlson is coordinating a working group of the Green Lands, Blue Waters coalition to learn from Iowa farmers who have had experience with cover crops, what worked and what hasn't worked. This information will be used to develop materials about cover cropping systems, species and practices suited for the Midwest. Call Sarah at 515.232.5661 or e-mail sarah@practicalfarmers.org. For more information, links to on-line publications and other resources, see our cover crops resource page

This working group is engaged in a variety of activities to promote water quality and a more diverse landscape. It is a consortium of land-grant universities  and agricultural, environmental and rural development non-profit organizations throughout the Mississippi River watershed. The group's Web site.  One focus of the regional consortium is facilitating enterprise development for promising perennial and continuous living cover systems.  A key mechanism is through the establishment, vision and drafting of strategic plans for five multi-state working groups (perennial grain breeding, agroforestry, cover crops, grazing, and biomass energy crops).

The Ecology Initiative suppoprts GLBW through a “special agriculture appropriation,” consisting of federal funding for water quality-related work obtained, obtained with the assistance of Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) and members of his staff on the Senate Agriculture Committee.

Grassland Agriculture program 

The Ecology Initiative began this program in 2004 to identify and address the barriers to the development of grass-based production systems in Iowa agriculture. This work complements the Green Lands, Blue Waters program, which advocates maintaining continuous living cover on the land.

Initially, program activities were coordinated in conjunction with the Leopold Center by Mr. John Sellers, Jr., a farmer from Corydon, Iowa area. In it's next evolution, many of this program's activities have been incorporated into a new initiative supported by the Leopold Center, the Grass-Based Livestock Working Group. GBLWG was launched in July 2008 and is expected to run at least three years. More about GBLWG

Midwest Cover Crops Council (MCCC)

The Midwest Cover Crops Council (MCCC) was convened to facilitate widespread adoption of cover crops throughout the Midwest, to improve ecological, economic, and social sustainability.

MCCC is a working group affiliate of the Green Lands Blue Waters regional consortium, and is populated by a diversity of participants. Iowa is primarily represented through the development of a state cover crops team that is linked to the Green Lands Blue Waters regional consortium and funded by the Leopold Ecology Initiative. The research effort is led by Tom Kaspar of the National Soil Tilth Laboratory, and the on-farm applications and outreach are coordinated by Sarah Carlson of Practical Farmers of Iowa. The Iowa group is developing a second farm outreach arm through the Iowa Learning Farm project.

 

Boone River Partnership

This group unites local producers, Iowa Soybean Association, Nature Conservancy, the Center’s Ecology Initiative, ISU’s Center for Agricultural and Rural Development, NRCS, local Soil and Water Conservation Districts, Iowa Department of Natural Resources and Prairie Rivers RC&D.

The Ecology Initiative provided funds for equipment and supplies, technical assistance, and data collection and interpretation that will yield evaluative performance measures for on-the-ground changes in selected (paired) Boone micro-watersheds. These funds were leveraged to help secure a 2-year, $800,000 Conservation Innovation Grant (CIG), “A Cooperative Conservation Framework for Improving Watershed Health” to conduct area-wide planning integrated with water monitoring in four central Iowa watersheds— two in the Boone River and two in the Raccoon River.

Twenty producers in each watershed are working on Certified Environmental Management Systems for Agriculture plans that will include energy efficiency, carbon, and greenhouse gas emissions assessment and planning, along with nutrients, soil, and pest management.

CIG partners include:

 

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