Prairie STRIPS: From research to action

Lisa Schulte-Moore Author

10/21/2016 Added

74 Plays

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Part of the 2016 Fall Seminar Series at the School of Natural Resources

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[00:00:00.532]Great, thanks Liza and also thanks Larkin
[00:00:02.722]also for hosting my visit.
[00:00:05.661]It's exciting to be in the great state of Nebraska today
[00:00:08.639]and this is actually my first time
[00:00:10.238]on the University of Nebraska Lincoln campus
[00:00:12.929]so yeah, it's a great day for me.
[00:00:16.183]So they brought me here to talk about the STRIPS project
[00:00:19.827]and STRIPS might not be as exciting as it initially sounds.
[00:00:23.884]It stands for Science-based Trials
[00:00:25.682]of Rowcrops Integrated with Prairie Strips,
[00:00:29.187]so it's this idea of putting a little bit
[00:00:30.892]of prairie into agricultural landscapes
[00:00:33.869]and I would be very remiss if I didn't point out
[00:00:36.957]that it's the work of many people.
[00:00:39.561]I'm excited to be able to present to you today on our work
[00:00:43.031]but clearly there's been lots of people involved
[00:00:47.819]including the lead PIs on various grants
[00:00:51.824]and a whole host of other scientists
[00:00:55.445]that have been involved over time
[00:00:57.290]and then graduate students and post-docs.
[00:01:00.482]This doesn't even include the, you know,
[00:01:02.347]the multitudes of undergraduate researchers
[00:01:05.572]that have been so critical in collecting data.
[00:01:08.380]And we've been running the project for,
[00:01:10.749]well we started back in (laughing) the fall of 2003
[00:01:14.227]in the conceptual phase and to keep a project going
[00:01:16.998]that long you need whole host of funders
[00:01:20.216]and now some of these folks are also supplying land
[00:01:25.179]that we're working on so the whole diverse consortium
[00:01:28.004]of folks that have kept this running.
[00:01:30.278]And especially I want to point out Matt Helmers,
[00:01:32.307]who's my co-lead on the project
[00:01:34.538]and he's a University of Nebraska Lincoln alumnus,
[00:01:40.487]and so you should be very proud of him.
[00:01:43.281]He's an awesome graduate of this institution.
[00:01:46.280]So, just to kind of then get us started
[00:01:49.184]with some of the context for our work,
[00:01:52.222]Iowa like Nebraska is a heavily agricultural state.
[00:01:56.424]We produce, by state statistics,
[00:02:01.386]we produce the most corn in the country.
[00:02:04.082]We oftentimes produce the most soybeans as well,
[00:02:07.493]although we contend for that position with Illinois.
[00:02:11.125]We produce the most eggs and the most hogs, the most ethanol
[00:02:15.681]and I think we're fourth in cattle production.
[00:02:17.969]I'm sure you guys beat us out on that metric.
[00:02:21.590]Anyway, it's about 20% of the state economy
[00:02:24.469]and agriculture is our culture.
[00:02:26.197]It's something that we're very proud of and of course,
[00:02:28.782]we want to maintain those statistics in the future.
[00:02:31.427]However, when you cover about 70% of a state area
[00:02:36.962]with two plants, corn or soybean, and they are only active
[00:02:42.664]for a portion of the year, there's some challenges
[00:02:46.083]that go along with that kind of land use.
[00:02:49.392]And in particular, a key challenge that we're trying
[00:02:52.453]to deal with in the state of Iowa, we have for decades,
[00:02:56.241]is the loss of our soil, which is the foundation
[00:02:59.129]of all this productivity to begin with.
[00:03:02.585]Rates of soil erosion that are, we know are not sustainable
[00:03:06.736]and you know critical to maintaining the prosperity
[00:03:11.265]of our farms and out state moving forward.
[00:03:14.701]And of course once soil is moved off these fields,
[00:03:18.743]with water, the water's bringing lots of other materials
[00:03:22.329]with it in addition to soil, the soil itself is a pollutant
[00:03:25.833]once it gets into our waterways.
[00:03:27.611]It's also bringing valuable nutrients from the crop field,
[00:03:30.545]in particular phosphorous and nitrogen
[00:03:33.148]that also become pollutants in our waterways.
[00:03:37.285]So that's a challenge that we need to deal with.
[00:03:39.692]And we're also very concerned about the loss
[00:03:42.394]of critical wildlife in the state.
[00:03:45.594]Grassland birds that have been on the decline for a century
[00:03:49.750]and then more recently the loss of,
[00:03:52.389]the declines in Monarch butterfly population, a species
[00:03:56.612]the migratory population of which is an iconic part
[00:04:00.173]of our biodiversity here in North America.
[00:04:03.736]So while we are really excited about, you know,
[00:04:08.749]this agricultural sector and everything
[00:04:11.350]that it provides to our culture and our economy,
[00:04:14.354]we recognize that there's some things about it
[00:04:17.030]that we need to shore up and in the state of Iowa,
[00:04:20.083]for the most part, the question we've gotten beyond the,
[00:04:23.999]you know, should we try to balance to the question
[00:04:27.083]of how do we try to balance these things?
[00:04:30.170]And the research that I've done
[00:04:32.284]at Iowa State is really centered on that whole question,
[00:04:35.330]is how do we provide balance, how do we continue
[00:04:37.349]to produce immense quantities of agricultural goods
[00:04:41.758]but yet shore up some of the environmental impacts
[00:04:45.709]in a way that also helps to sustain real livelihoods?
[00:04:50.081]And a key hypothesis underlining my work
[00:04:54.079]and certainly the work of the STRIPS team is shown here.
[00:04:59.396]We call it the Strategic Integration
[00:05:01.293]Disproportionate Benefits Hypothesis,
[00:05:04.016]or simply Disproportionate Benefits Hypothesis for short.
[00:05:08.009]And the idea is that we know
[00:05:11.454]that agricultural landscapes that are based on annuals
[00:05:15.844]produce a lot of agricultural goods
[00:05:18.429]but when it comes to other environmental benefits,
[00:05:23.501]they're challenged.
[00:05:25.572]But, and on the contrast, we know
[00:05:27.764]that perennial plants are great
[00:05:30.347]at providing environmental benefits,
[00:05:32.984]but they're simply, in most cases, not as productive
[00:05:37.558]or not as easy to manage as some of those annual crops.
[00:05:41.534]So the question is is, can we, you know, be really strategic
[00:05:44.950]about integrating in perennial land uses
[00:05:47.823]into our annually dominated landscapes
[00:05:50.394]in ways where we can capture
[00:05:52.200]these disproportionate benefits,
[00:05:56.069]recognizing that the state as a whole is going
[00:05:58.510]to be continued to be dominated by corn
[00:06:01.185]and soybean for long to come.
[00:06:03.407]However, can we be really smart about the kind of perennials
[00:06:08.049]that we put in this landscape, where we put them
[00:06:10.231]and how much we introduce to try to sort of achieve
[00:06:14.483]this portion of the curve where we maximize the benefit
[00:06:18.263]while maintaining still landscapes
[00:06:21.189]that are largely in those annual,
[00:06:24.375]dominated by those annual plants and the support
[00:06:27.165]for this Disproportionate Benefits Hypothesis,
[00:06:29.985]we reviewed literature form across the globe
[00:06:32.557]and overall the idea is strongly supported
[00:06:36.279]within ecological environmental literature.
[00:06:40.502]So this kinda basic hypothesis is what was underlying
[00:06:46.113]and that literature review is
[00:06:48.128]what underlies the STRIPS experiment.
[00:06:51.215]And the STRIPS experiment initially was conducted
[00:06:54.265]on small watersheds at Neal Smith National Wildlife Refuge
[00:06:58.231]which is located just to east of Des Moines, Iowa.
[00:07:02.128]It's a small-scale, well watershed scale,
[00:07:05.994]but watersheds of two to eight acres in size
[00:07:09.500]research location where we could highly control
[00:07:13.123]both the integration of the perennial
[00:07:16.114]as well as the management of the agricultural crops
[00:07:19.386]around that perennial that we'd strategically integrated.
[00:07:24.494]And in this case we've, in the overall research,
[00:07:29.710]a portfolio we're looking at all sorts
[00:07:32.456]of different perennials
[00:07:33.945]and integrating them into the annual landscape.
[00:07:36.007]In this particular experiment, the perennial
[00:07:38.373]that we chose to focus on is reconstructed prairie
[00:07:42.184]and there's several key reasons why
[00:07:44.367]in this experiment we chose to focus on prairie.
[00:07:47.918]Okay, let's see, alright come on.
[00:07:54.401]Okay, there we go.
[00:07:56.588]So why prairie?
[00:07:57.956]And again there's support for this choice of prairie
[00:08:01.101]within the literature.
[00:08:03.813]So first of all is relating back to that hypothesis,
[00:08:07.074]it's a perennial cover type, a perennial community,
[00:08:11.647]meaning that, you know, it has, it's covering the land
[00:08:15.017]throughout the entire year and there's plants
[00:08:17.912]within that community that together are active
[00:08:21.096]across almost all of the growing season
[00:08:23.969]and certainly below ground there's continual activity
[00:08:27.140]within that ecosystem.
[00:08:29.769]Part of that activity is really fostered
[00:08:33.311]by the deep roots associated with the perennial plants.
[00:08:37.502]And here you see on the, on your right there,
[00:08:42.212]a picture provided by the Land Institute
[00:08:45.208]comparing Little Bluestem, a native perennial plant,
[00:08:48.745]to new wheat, an annual plant, and you can see
[00:08:51.973]from this picture, you know, while the above ground stature
[00:08:55.348]of these two plants is quite similar,
[00:08:57.366]the below ground structure is quite different.
[00:09:01.740]The third reason is that unlike many perennial cover types
[00:09:05.929]that are integrated into our current annual landscape,
[00:09:08.633]plants like Smooth Groam.
[00:09:11.330]Prairie plants have stiff upright stems that hold up
[00:09:14.514]in a pounding rain and also hold up
[00:09:16.840]when water is running across a landscape.
[00:09:20.330]It doesn't just lie flat the way that Groam does.
[00:09:23.456]Fourth, they're diverse.
[00:09:25.914]Of course the native prairies in our region, you know,
[00:09:29.161]200+ species in a prairie,
[00:09:32.633]200+ species of plants in a patch.
[00:09:36.695]In a reconstructed prairie we're not planting that many.
[00:09:39.887]We're planting about 33 species
[00:09:41.628]but certainly it's a lot more diverse
[00:09:43.563]than the annual landscape that,
[00:09:46.977]or the annual cover-type that we're replacing in this case.
[00:09:49.905]So primarily dominated by just one species,
[00:09:52.393]the corn or the soybean.
[00:09:54.951]And fifth, they're native and so
[00:09:56.951]because of that prairie plants are well adapted
[00:09:59.833]to our mid-Western soils, they're adapted
[00:10:02.898]to our Mid-Western climates,
[00:10:04.584]and our native bioda are adapted to it.
[00:10:08.901]The experimental treatments that we've integrated in
[00:10:12.266]in this experiment look like this.
[00:10:14.687]We looked at four different treatments
[00:10:16.518]that are replicated three times, for a total
[00:10:19.332]of 12 total catchments that we are looking at.
[00:10:22.964]The first treatment was our baseline of 100% rowcrops,
[00:10:28.525]shown here on the left.
[00:10:31.782]The second one is a catchment that is dominated by rowcrops
[00:10:38.009]and in this case it's 90% of that area is in rowcrop
[00:10:42.339]and then we put just 10% of that catchment area
[00:10:46.066]in prairie all at the base.
[00:10:48.608]The third treatment over is another 90% rowcrop 10% prairie
[00:10:53.889]but you can see the prairie is integrated in
[00:10:55.875]in multiple strips along the contour
[00:10:58.808]and finally, a 20% prairie 80% rowcrop treatment there
[00:11:03.637]on the right, again, within multiple prairie strips.
[00:11:07.729]The slopes in this experiment range from about six to 11%
[00:11:12.378]so they're more steep, there's not flat land
[00:11:16.801]and also the rowcrops are managed
[00:11:19.200]using no-till soil management techniques,
[00:11:23.178]so from a soil conservation perspective,
[00:11:24.926]it's the best of the best.
[00:11:28.855]We established this experiment in 2007.
[00:11:31.614]As I mentioned,
[00:11:33.421]we planted about 33 native perennial species,
[00:11:37.301]at least that was in what was in the seed analysis
[00:11:40.604]that we looked at and by 2011,
[00:11:44.421]the summer of 2011, four years later,
[00:11:46.923]we actually found 39 native perennials in our plant surveys
[00:11:53.264]so either those species were already there
[00:11:55.538]or they were in the seed mix
[00:11:57.060]and we didn't account for them or they'd moved in
[00:11:59.461]to our prairie strips and overall by 2007,
[00:12:02.553]we achieved 115% cover in terms of the plants,
[00:12:08.196]so with overlapping and canopy structure,
[00:12:10.233]that's why it adds up to more than 100%.
[00:12:14.164]So by 2011 we would say
[00:12:16.230]that we effectively had established a reconstructed prairie
[00:12:20.467]within the prairie strips on these sites.
[00:12:24.333]As I mentioned the crops were managed.
[00:12:26.505]It was a corn and soybean rotation managed
[00:12:30.061]with no-till and the crops are managed by a local farmer
[00:12:33.552]who rented land on other parts of the refuge as well
[00:12:37.061]and he just did crop management the way
[00:12:39.555]that he did also at his own farm.
[00:12:44.475]A really cool thing that we were able to do
[00:12:47.987]in this study is really in-depth scientific monitoring
[00:12:51.504]and looking at what was happening in these watersheds
[00:12:54.355]from multiple perspectives.
[00:12:56.605]So what we're seeing here in this slide is up here
[00:13:00.002]you'll see one of our experimental catchments.
[00:13:02.802]It's 10% prairie strips treatment,
[00:13:06.099]so of this catchment area, 90% is in crops
[00:13:10.482]and 10% in prairie with these multiple contour strips
[00:13:15.281]as well as a larger patch of prairie
[00:13:17.465]in the footslope position and down here you see our
[00:13:20.012]hydrological monitoring devices.
[00:13:22.535]Here's a closer picture of the H-Flume
[00:13:25.195]in addition to being able to measure all of the runoff
[00:13:28.360]as well as some of the chemical constituents associated
[00:13:31.737]with that runoff, we are also able
[00:13:33.747]to look at groundwater soil moisture within these catchments
[00:13:38.515]and we monitored for plant biodiversity, bird biodiversity,
[00:13:41.579]and insect biodiversity as well.
[00:13:44.710]Also, some soil chemistry and structure measures.
[00:13:49.567]As I mentioned, we've been at this awhile
[00:13:52.138]and we've been lucky to have a really productive team
[00:13:55.156]and have overall produced 56 scientific publications,
[00:13:59.493]including about, I don't know, 35 or so
[00:14:02.181]that have been reviewed in the peer review,
[00:14:04.499]have been published in the peer review literature.
[00:14:07.186]I point this out, in this case,
[00:14:08.958]because I'm gonna keep my summary of these research results
[00:14:13.274]pretty high level and you'll see
[00:14:15.773]that I'm citing the publications
[00:14:17.938]that I'm drawing the overall conclusions from
[00:14:20.168]down here at the bottom, so if you want more information
[00:14:23.495]on the detailed data, you can refer
[00:14:25.951]to those already published research articles to find that.
[00:14:31.132]Certainly, our soil and water measurements
[00:14:35.679]have probably been the ones
[00:14:38.405]that have garnered the most attention from this experiment
[00:14:42.429]and these three pictures kind of summarize many
[00:14:46.958]of our results in a very visual way,
[00:14:51.365]although we've got quantitative data spanning,
[00:14:55.098]you know, almost a decade now that backs up these pictures.
[00:15:00.326]These pictures were taken in 2008
[00:15:02.543]after a four inch rainstorm in June
[00:15:07.411]and what you can see is here in the leftmost picture,
[00:15:12.898]that watersheds that are managed with no-till,
[00:15:17.464]that's the best soil conservation,
[00:15:20.003]are still losing a lot of soil from these areas.
[00:15:26.279]There's a lot of movement of the soil and in this case
[00:15:29.869]we're losing about 4.5 tons per acre per year on average.
[00:15:35.994]What we found is that if you put a little bit of prairie in
[00:15:39.176]and in this case in the middle,
[00:15:42.019]you see a 10% prairie at the base treatment,
[00:15:45.461]we can reduce the amount of soil
[00:15:48.378]that we see leaving these catchments by 95%,
[00:15:52.382]so it's about .2, .3 tons per acre per year.
[00:15:56.905]Not that we're not losing any soil,
[00:15:58.554]we just reduce the amount of soil that we lose by 95%.
[00:16:03.044]And another area of the Refuge that has an H-Flume
[00:16:06.407]that was part of a companion study
[00:16:09.005]we can see here that watersheds that are entirely in prairie
[00:16:12.507]don't lose soil, so that's another baseline.
[00:16:18.066]Also comparing this 100% crops to the 90% crops 10% prairie
[00:16:26.233]in addition to the soil measures, there's a lot
[00:16:29.436]of nutrients that are also moving
[00:16:31.185]with that water and the soil.
[00:16:34.317]So phosphorous tends to move with soil.
[00:16:36.308]We keep 90% more of that valuable nutrient phosphorous
[00:16:39.858]in the field when we put the 10% prairie on there.
[00:16:43.170]We keep 84% more of that nitrogen
[00:16:45.642]that otherwise would be lost through surface water runoff
[00:16:49.067]in that watershed and overall we reduce the amount
[00:16:52.365]of surface water runoff by 42%
[00:16:55.223]when we have that 10% prairie solution.
[00:16:58.112]So numerous, you know, positive measures
[00:17:00.947]with regards to water measures.
[00:17:04.271]We also looked at groundwater as I mentioned before.
[00:17:08.370]The sites that we're looking at here are not
[00:17:10.467]effectively tiled.
[00:17:12.306]They're some old broken tile on the site from way back when
[00:17:15.240]but effectively not drained by tile anymore.
[00:17:18.366]What we see is that by the time you move
[00:17:21.262]to that footslope position
[00:17:22.938]if you've got a prairie strip there,
[00:17:25.466]we reduce the amount of nitrate nitrogen leaving
[00:17:29.591]through the groundwater sources by about 70%
[00:17:34.038]and we have some of our initial results on this published
[00:17:38.065]in a paper in 2010 where we were surprised
[00:17:42.667]by how quickly the groundwater responded
[00:17:45.468]but we haven't yet published some of the longer term results
[00:17:49.060]and so here you can see in the graphic
[00:17:51.282]that there's very little, there's no separation among any
[00:17:55.411]of the treatments that have a little bit of prairie
[00:17:58.139]but if it's all in rowcrop there's a strong,
[00:18:01.984]there's much higher levels of nitrate nitrogen in,
[00:18:06.327]moving with that groundwater and of course
[00:18:09.755]the EPA limit for drinking water is 10 milligrams per liter,
[00:18:14.435]so in that all rowcrop watershed we're getting
[00:18:17.854]up there over time in terms of getting close
[00:18:21.404]to that particular threshold.
[00:18:25.033]As I mentioned we also looked at soil.
[00:18:26.966]Another thing that we were really surprised to see is
[00:18:29.820]that we improved the quality of soils
[00:18:32.983]within the footslope position, so right here in front
[00:18:35.968]of the flume within just three years.
[00:18:39.261]Usually it takes a really long time
[00:18:41.586]to measure changes in soil.
[00:18:43.521]In terms of quality that means,
[00:18:45.340]what we're talking about there is
[00:18:47.942]an increase in total nitrogen by 100%
[00:18:51.386]and in increase in soil organic carbon by 37%.
[00:18:56.323]If any of you work on soil carbon you know
[00:18:58.915]it takes a long time to build soil carbon.
[00:19:01.312]They way that we're accounting for this is that,
[00:19:03.671]of course, soil is moving from the upper portion
[00:19:07.345]of the watershed and we're just capturing it,
[00:19:10.160]primarily we're just capturing that carbon
[00:19:12.224]in that prairie strip at the base as well
[00:19:14.941]as capturing those nutrients at the base
[00:19:16.996]within the prairie strip.
[00:19:19.635]Another important feature of the prairie strip is
[00:19:22.515]that with all that biological activity in that position,
[00:19:26.222]we're able to, you know, I said we're losing less nitrogen,
[00:19:30.296]both through surface water and groundwater.
[00:19:32.536]What's happening to that nitrogen?
[00:19:34.820]We know from work done by Mike Castellano and Javed Iqbal
[00:19:40.591]that that nitrogen is being completely converted
[00:19:44.059]to di-nitrogen gas, an inert gas,
[00:19:47.849]and it's not being emitted as nitrous oxide,
[00:19:50.814]which is a potent greenhouse gas.
[00:19:53.838]This was important because we didn't want
[00:19:55.856]to trade a water quality problem for an air quality problem
[00:19:58.807]and we found out that that's not the case.
[00:20:02.742]In terms of some of the biological measures,
[00:20:05.126]I mentioned overall we're able to establish
[00:20:07.525]that prairie strips within a few years,
[00:20:10.812]if you build a habitat the organisms will come.
[00:20:15.597]We've seen a 2.6 times increase in insect species richness
[00:20:21.197]and we see both more natural enemy insects,
[00:20:24.836]so insects that eat crop pests,
[00:20:27.548]as well as improvements in pollinators.
[00:20:30.603]And it's about doubling in the number of species
[00:20:34.494]of natural enemies that we're able to provide habitat for
[00:20:38.463]and a over a tripling in the native pollinators
[00:20:42.368]that we're able to support and the pollinator difference
[00:20:45.799]is both in richness as well as abundance.
[00:20:50.086]If you provide the structure and you provide the food source
[00:20:52.639]the birds will also come.
[00:20:54.203](laughing) Moving up the food chain.
[00:20:56.557]We've seen a two times level increase
[00:21:00.225]in bird species richness and abundance of birds
[00:21:04.255]and exciting is that some of the species
[00:21:08.321]of greatest conservation need in the state of Iowa,
[00:21:11.744]species like the the Dickcissle and Common Yellow-throats
[00:21:14.547]are also responding to that habitat.
[00:21:18.006]If we look at grassland birds as a whole guild, however,
[00:21:22.822]we're not seeing an increase in grassland bird numbers.
[00:21:26.390]Basically the habitat we're providing just isn't big enough
[00:21:29.700]for things like well, pheasants are included in that guild,
[00:21:36.551]as well as things like Upland Sandpiper,
[00:21:41.047]but we're not seeing Bobolinks,
[00:21:43.015]we're not seeing those, we're not providing habitats
[00:21:45.437]for those with our prairie strips.
[00:21:47.489]But still, overall, we are able to provide habitat
[00:21:49.921]for at least a certain segment of our bird population.
[00:21:54.274]Importantly to the farmers that we work with
[00:21:57.623]we've also documented that there's no interaction
[00:22:01.081]between the prairie strip and the adjacent crop land
[00:22:04.068]that's affecting yield in a negative way.
[00:22:07.325]Basically the prairie strip stays in the prairie strip
[00:22:11.456]and isn't drawing nutrients or water away from that crop.
[00:22:15.848]We've shown that we don't introduce additional weed pressure
[00:22:19.344]into the agricultural areas of that catchment
[00:22:21.658]as a result of establishing that prairie.
[00:22:24.445]We don't wanna be creating weed problems for farmers.
[00:22:28.342]We've also harvested the prairie biomass from these sites
[00:22:32.715]using just, you know, typical haying equipment
[00:22:36.250]and on average, the prairie strips establish,
[00:22:39.434]or have been growing about 3.1 tons per acre
[00:22:43.833]of prairie grasses and informs that
[00:22:47.541]if there were a bioenergy market to develop
[00:22:51.861]around diversified plant feed stocks,
[00:22:54.885]this would not be too shabby of a yield,
[00:22:57.673]especially when the primary motive is oftentimes,
[00:23:00.835]for farmers to put these on their land,
[00:23:02.916]is for soil and water conservation.
[00:23:05.705]And we've looked at the economics as well and we've shown
[00:23:09.258]that prairie strips are an affordable option.
[00:23:11.721]They cost about 29 cents a linear foot
[00:23:15.552]and another comparable practice that's commonly put
[00:23:17.986]on farm field in Iowa to conserve soil are terraces.
[00:23:22.721]By comparison terraces cost almost $4 per linear foot,
[00:23:27.455]so an order of magnitude less.
[00:23:30.295]And we can bring that cost per treated acre,
[00:23:34.137]if we think about treating all of the farmland's
[00:23:37.129]with prairie strips, down to $3 per acre
[00:23:39.979]if the landed prairie strip is able to enrolled
[00:23:42.614]in the USDA's Conservation Reserve Program.
[00:23:49.194]This is a graphic, I don't expect you to be able
[00:23:52.699]to interpret all by yourself in this small format
[00:23:56.335]but I do want to point out that one of the things
[00:23:58.711]that we're working on right now is an integrated analysis
[00:24:01.854]across all of those measures.
[00:24:03.650]What I've showed you have been published
[00:24:05.931]in separate disciplinary papers,
[00:24:07.992]so now we're looking at analysis that allows us
[00:24:10.262]to compare hydrological measures with biodiversity measures
[00:24:14.168]with soil measures, for example.
[00:24:16.837]And a really key thing that I want to point out here
[00:24:20.409]is we've looked at three different contrasts,
[00:24:23.126]prairie versus no prairie, 10% prairie versus 20% prairie
[00:24:27.913]and that's strips at the bottom
[00:24:29.754]versus multiple contour strips
[00:24:31.674]and there's almost no difference in any measure
[00:24:35.501]among strips 10 to 20% or 10% and then strips
[00:24:41.872]in multiple strips versus all at the bottom,
[00:24:44.843]but there's dramatic differences
[00:24:46.509]when you just put a little bit of prairie in.
[00:24:49.488]And to summarize this in a way
[00:24:51.755]that you can see a little bit better.
[00:24:54.093]So this is the measured impact of 10 to 20%,
[00:24:58.007]those combined versus that 100% no-till,
[00:25:01.277]and the largest magnitude of the response as I pointed out
[00:25:06.689]in the picture slide has been in the area of soil retention.
[00:25:10.759]So we're able to keep 95% more soil,
[00:25:13.599]or 20 times more soil with just a little bit of prairie
[00:25:16.605]integrating in strategically a little bit
[00:25:19.027]of prairie in these watersheds.
[00:25:21.227]We establish a little over 13 times more native perennials
[00:25:30.369]in those areas and the native perennials
[00:25:33.937]then are associated with retaining that soil
[00:25:37.038]as well as improvement in several water quality measures
[00:25:41.814]and here you see the response of the water quality measures.
[00:25:46.691]We also see improvements in insect and bird taxa
[00:25:51.961]while and the 0 here.
[00:25:55.876]See if you, this line corresponds to the number one
[00:25:59.500]which would correspond to no difference among the treatments
[00:26:03.625]and we can see that we have no difference
[00:26:06.255]in the number of weeds in the crop field
[00:26:08.283]as well as per acre cropland yield.
[00:26:11.752]The only measure that decreases slightly is that
[00:26:15.070]at that whole catchment scale we do see a reduction
[00:26:20.932]in yield because remember we're taking 10 to 20%
[00:26:23.608]of that area out of corn and soybeans,
[00:26:27.094]and putting it into the prairie strip,
[00:26:29.163]so you're trading off, basically.
[00:26:31.239]When you're integrate prairie strips
[00:26:33.118]you're trading off this little slice for all of this.
[00:26:40.829]If this seems to make sense to you
[00:26:43.564]in terms of a conservation practice,
[00:26:46.145]you're not the only one.
[00:26:47.667]Our initial results started to get out there
[00:26:51.222]within the agricultural population in Iowa
[00:26:55.459]and we started to have farmers come forward and say,
[00:26:58.765]"Hmm, I want to try this on my farm.
[00:27:01.498]"I think it makes sense for my farm.
[00:27:03.818]"Can you help us with that?"
[00:27:06.130]Well as a person that understands how to make measurements
[00:27:09.449]and analyze data, there was a big jump in learning curves
[00:27:14.787]between actually implementing a highly controlled experiment
[00:27:18.118]and thinking about how you would integrate a practice
[00:27:20.803]on a commercial farm field and that's what we've been
[00:27:24.473]trying to overcome in the last few years of the experiment.
[00:27:28.859]2012 was our first chance to help a farmer
[00:27:32.118]put prairie strips on his field down in southwest Iowa
[00:27:38.628]and over the last few years, we've added, oh, sorry.
[00:27:45.344]We've added 29 more.
[00:27:48.635]We've also found that some farmers had already independently
[00:27:52.016]come up with this idea and now we're working
[00:27:54.649]with those farmers as well to try to understand
[00:27:57.872]what the benefit is of that prairie strip
[00:28:01.236]on their commercial farm field.
[00:28:03.481]The red star in the middle is our initial research site.
[00:28:06.198]That's where the Neal Smith National Wildlife Refuge is.
[00:28:08.799]The disparate stars across the state of Iowa,
[00:28:12.023]moving into Wisconsin and into Missouri are now all
[00:28:15.942]of the locations that we're working on today.
[00:28:18.883]So within a very short period of time,
[00:28:20.795]we've seen a substantial scale up in the number
[00:28:25.054]of places where we're working and the number of people
[00:28:28.815]that are interested in implementing prairie strips
[00:28:31.477]on their own land.
[00:28:33.280]Some of them, like Mr. and Mrs. Stone shown here,
[00:28:35.918]have actually garnered the attention of their community
[00:28:39.503]and for example, they're now the, considered,
[00:28:42.216]they were just awarded the
[00:28:44.411]Conservation Leader for 2016 Award
[00:28:47.703]for putting prairie strips on their land in Tama County.
[00:28:51.166]So it's really fun to see some of these people now
[00:28:53.551]getting recognition for themselves and their own farm
[00:28:56.600]as a result of picking up the practice
[00:28:59.392]and integrating it in on their own farm.
[00:29:03.497]So why are these people doing this?
[00:29:07.347](laughing)
[00:29:08.988]Do their neighbors think they're crazy?
[00:29:10.720]Probably, but from their standpoint it makes sense
[00:29:14.595]and here's where we've conducted ad hoc interviews
[00:29:18.172]or some surveys with our farmers.
[00:29:21.389]These are the reasons why they say
[00:29:23.490]they are adapting prairie strips for their land.
[00:29:26.746]First of all, and this is probably the best compliment
[00:29:29.426]you could ever get from a farmer, is they see it
[00:29:31.646]as a practical option for their farm.
[00:29:35.338]It's something that makes sense to them.
[00:29:38.154]Why does it make sense?
[00:29:39.359]Well, one of the concerns about some
[00:29:41.832]other conservation practices, such as cover crops,
[00:29:44.687]is that they interfere potentially with spring management
[00:29:49.389]and if you, as one of our farmers put it,
[00:29:51.718]Gary, he says, you know,
[00:29:53.282]"If you farm, you do not want to lose your soil,"
[00:29:55.793]and certainly for almost all the farmers and landowners
[00:29:58.040]that we worked with, that's a primary motivation.
[00:30:00.590]They don't want to lose their soil.
[00:30:02.235]So cover crops is another great option
[00:30:04.018]for keeping your soil however there's a concern
[00:30:06.180]in terms of interference with spring management
[00:30:10.314]of their cash crop, the corn and the soybean.
[00:30:13.456]Also, some of these people already have terraces
[00:30:16.651]on their land and they know it's not quite doing the job,
[00:30:20.375]so why not put on more terraces?
[00:30:23.250]So one of the challenges with terraces is
[00:30:25.866]that it has an infrastructural practice.
[00:30:29.193]If you change your equipment size,
[00:30:31.340]it can be very challenging to farm around those terraces.
[00:30:35.055]You can't move the terrace as you change equipment size.
[00:30:38.392]So they like the idea of prairie strips
[00:30:40.325]as a vegetative practice
[00:30:42.263]in that it gives them more options for the future
[00:30:45.674]and we can design them such that they minimize conflict
[00:30:49.981]with their existing tractor movement.
[00:30:52.589]And then finally they talk about other goals for their farm
[00:30:55.595]in addition to the soil conservation.
[00:30:58.269]For example, one of our farmers is also a sailor.
[00:31:00.971]He sails on the Gulf of Mexico.
[00:31:02.561]He doesn't want to go down to the Gulf of Mexico,
[00:31:04.506]or he wants to go down to the Gulf of Mexico and say,
[00:31:07.651]"I'm not your problem, I'm your solution."
[00:31:10.503]Other farmers talk about wanting
[00:31:12.265]to introduce more wildness to their farm.
[00:31:14.373]Some of the folks are really interested
[00:31:16.242]in maintaining our native pollinators.
[00:31:18.558]So there's a whole host of reasons.
[00:31:20.485]They all make sense to them for their farms.
[00:31:22.926]And certainly we've started
[00:31:24.710]to gain traction at the state level as well.
[00:31:28.661]Bills introduced, for example, to the Iowa House
[00:31:32.144]that would help pay for putting prairie strips on land.
[00:31:35.465]And the reason why is that,
[00:31:37.366]this is some of our survey data from all of Iowa.
[00:31:40.868]What you see is that these are Iowans' priorities
[00:31:45.305]for agricultural policies and programs
[00:31:48.103]and prairie strips can address many of them.
[00:31:50.384]So for example the water quality,
[00:31:53.046]which shows up in many different ways
[00:31:56.427]in our survey responses.
[00:31:58.491]By increasing infiltration, potential
[00:32:01.334]to reduce flood control, providing habitat for wildlife,
[00:32:05.537]and then greenhouse gas emissions
[00:32:08.303]as well as non-game wildlife habitat.
[00:32:11.349]So it fits priorities that Iowans hold
[00:32:13.895]for the state in addition to farmers for their farms.
[00:32:20.483]So as I mentioned at least in some conversations
[00:32:23.062]that we've kind of expanded beyond the Refuge
[00:32:26.171]in terms of what we're doing in research.
[00:32:28.212]We're now in what we call the Phase II Research
[00:32:30.757]and Demonstration phase of the project
[00:32:33.045]and basically we think that, you know,
[00:32:35.666]with that 10 to 20% prairie strips,
[00:32:38.670]that we've kind of figured out
[00:32:40.583]where the shoulder is on this curve.
[00:32:42.973]But how well does that hold up in different locations,
[00:32:45.795]on different soil types, on different slopes,
[00:32:49.149]in different landscape contexts,
[00:32:51.081]which is important from a wildlife perspective?
[00:32:53.208]So in Phase II now that we're working on commercial farms
[00:32:56.682]rather than in small experimental catchments
[00:33:00.173]on a wildlife refuge, we're really trying
[00:33:02.947]to figure out where the air bars are in this graphic
[00:33:06.530]and right around here at
[00:33:08.245]that 10 to 20% prairie strip treatment.
[00:33:11.181]And here are some of the things
[00:33:13.088]that we're hoping we can address in the Phase II experiment.
[00:33:17.394]Some of these are based on questions that we've received
[00:33:20.319]from farmers and farmland owners.
[00:33:23.911]Others are questions that come up from policymakers
[00:33:26.522]or just from questions in audiences such as yourself.
[00:33:31.861]What does this look like when we move it
[00:33:35.071]out into the commercial farm environment?
[00:33:37.166]Here's one example from Wright County,
[00:33:40.353]which has some of the highest land values in all of Iowa.
[00:33:46.696]It's up in north-central Iowa on the Des Moines lobe.
[00:33:50.328]It's some of the best of the best soil.
[00:33:52.931]In Wright County the land is flat to undulating
[00:33:56.769]and in this case, working with the landowner,
[00:34:01.760]he already had this area along the stream
[00:34:05.863]that was in groam and was really interested
[00:34:10.379]in just slowing down the water
[00:34:12.585]that was moving across this hill slope.
[00:34:14.716]So we integrated in two prairie strips on his farm.
[00:34:17.765]This one is a little bit odd shaped
[00:34:20.488]and the idea behind that one was actually
[00:34:22.968]to improve the movement of his tractor in this field
[00:34:27.321]and his interest was, in addition to slowing down the water,
[00:34:31.999]improving water quality, he wanted to connect this area
[00:34:35.315]of his farm up here, which has never been tilled,
[00:34:39.058]with an area in the Conservation Reserve Program down here.
[00:34:42.884]So he was looking at his prairie strip in terms
[00:34:44.869]of a corridor for wildlife from this area to this area.
[00:34:50.595]Not all land is flat
[00:34:53.849]to sloping however. (laughing)
[00:34:57.361]This is the Tama County farm, which is heavily sloped
[00:35:00.816]and in this case the prairie strips are integrated
[00:35:05.292]in this way in terms of very regular contour buffer strips
[00:35:12.047]and we needed to design them this way
[00:35:15.497]so that this land would qualify
[00:35:17.766]for the Conservation Reserve Program.
[00:35:20.643]So the prairie strips can look very different
[00:35:23.009]depending on the farm that we're working on.
[00:35:29.961]Another thing that we've had to adapt a little bit is
[00:35:33.330]when we're working on the refuge we use the same seed mix
[00:35:36.176]throughout our 12, well our nine catchments
[00:35:39.840]that we put the prairie strips on,
[00:35:41.996]that 33 species mix.
[00:35:43.562]Now that we're working in very different parts of the state,
[00:35:46.975]the seed mix is now variable, partly based
[00:35:50.369]on seed availability in different areas,
[00:35:52.623]but also because the way that we pay
[00:35:55.226]to put these prairie strips on
[00:35:57.229]and the farm level goals are different.
[00:35:59.303]In some cases, people are really just interested
[00:36:01.273]in that soil conservation benefit.
[00:36:03.255]They can probably achieve that with fairly low diversity,
[00:36:06.733]in one case a 15 species prairie mix.
[00:36:11.214]In other cases the farmer or farmland owners
[00:36:14.347]really interested in the biodiversity conservation aspects,
[00:36:17.944]in addition to the soil conservation aspects.
[00:36:22.358]And in some cases we have seed mixes
[00:36:24.505]that have been planted on the order of 85 species.
[00:36:28.941]So quite a difference in the range
[00:36:31.068]of seed mixes being planted, so less control
[00:36:34.865]in terms of our research component when you move out there.
[00:36:38.866]There's another logistical factor in that
[00:36:41.634]trying to conduct research across such a wide variety
[00:36:45.566]of sites is expensive, just from a travel standpoint
[00:36:48.860]as well as some farms just lend themselves better
[00:36:52.095]to the kinds of measurements we want to make than others.
[00:36:55.789]So we kind of divided up the farms that we're working on
[00:36:58.800]in terms of places where we're doing very basic monitoring
[00:37:02.686]and I'll talk about what that looks like in a minute here,
[00:37:04.620]and then places where we're doing in-depth research.
[00:37:07.403]And with the in-depth research we're trying to get
[00:37:10.105]at most of the same measures that we were able
[00:37:12.979]to capture in our initial experiment
[00:37:15.895]at that Neal Smith National Wildlife Refuge.
[00:37:20.028]And here are the environmental benefits
[00:37:22.322]that we're trying to measure on these farms.
[00:37:24.953]As I mentioned on some we're able to collect them
[00:37:29.116]on more sites than others.
[00:37:33.436]So for example the bulb measures are being collected
[00:37:36.587]on 12 different farms whereas six paired sites
[00:37:40.292]in which we can address the soil and water,
[00:37:43.208]especially the water quality measures
[00:37:48.791]where we can actually implement the flumes.
[00:37:50.718]And here's what one of our sites looks like
[00:37:53.889]where we have a comparison,
[00:37:56.183]where we have a control field that's just being farmed
[00:37:59.661]they way this farmer always farmed this field,
[00:38:03.227]and then in this case we have our treatment field.
[00:38:06.154]The difference between the control and the treatment is
[00:38:08.393]that the treatment field has the prairie strips.
[00:38:12.009]Here you can see two there and then one up in this location
[00:38:16.068]and then some of the monitoring devices
[00:38:19.641]that we have implemented out here
[00:38:21.767]to try to capture what the impact is.
[00:38:25.341]Just about everybody wants a flume on their property,
[00:38:29.183]which ideally it would be great to do that
[00:38:32.365]but these cost $10,000 apiece,
[00:38:35.395]so (laughing)
[00:38:37.236]altogether and then it takes a technician
[00:38:40.525]to go out and service these
[00:38:42.856]at various intervals and analyze the data.
[00:38:46.007]We're not able to do that.
[00:38:47.893]We're lucky that we're able to implement the flumes
[00:38:50.860]using the control comparison, so control treatment
[00:38:56.801]without prairie strips on at six different locations,
[00:39:00.827]so we can get good hydrological measures.
[00:39:03.340]One thing we can use those flumes though
[00:39:05.325]for is to help us calibrate a much cheaper method
[00:39:10.371]of looking at soil erosion.
[00:39:12.781]So these are erosion pads.
[00:39:14.989]They cost, you know, maybe $4 apiece.
[00:39:17.928]You put a raze of these erosion pads out
[00:39:21.077]across a farm field and you collect them.
[00:39:23.708]They've collected soil that's run across the surface
[00:39:26.717]of the land with water and we can use those H-Flumes
[00:39:31.228]to, like I said, calibrate how much soil
[00:39:33.743]is associated with, how much soil loss is associated
[00:39:37.794]with how much soil these actual erosion pads capture.
[00:39:41.849]A goal that we have is to at least provide every single
[00:39:45.587]farmer or farmland owner some measure of the reduction
[00:39:49.888]in soil erosion associated with the prairie strips,
[00:39:52.599]because, like I said, that's the primary motivation
[00:39:54.908]for folks to put these on.
[00:39:58.628]We're able to do bird point counts on a variety
[00:40:02.309]of, I think we're working, I should know this exactly,
[00:40:06.415]but it should be 12 different farms,
[00:40:08.480]but we're also now able to compare prairie strips
[00:40:11.184]to a variety of conservation practices.
[00:40:13.151]So for example, what's the lift that you get
[00:40:17.963]from a prairie strip as opposed to a contour buffer strip
[00:40:21.222]made out of groam, and how much do you get
[00:40:23.947]from a prairie strip as opposed to a larger block
[00:40:26.324]of CRP that's located close to this farm?
[00:40:29.873]And here are some of our results
[00:40:31.688]from this last field season and you can see,
[00:40:36.391]this is just the number of observations,
[00:40:38.921]not by treatment at this case, but a lot
[00:40:41.655]of the birds that we initially saw in our catchment
[00:40:44.737]base experiment are again showing up
[00:40:46.861]in this more field level,
[00:40:48.872]commercial farm field level application of prairie strips.
[00:40:53.947]Because we're not able to get to everywhere early
[00:40:56.671]in the morning and most people want some kind
[00:41:00.629]of measure of the biodiversity using the strips,
[00:41:03.342]we are now using these automated recording units to try
[00:41:06.320]to at least give them some sense
[00:41:08.407]of the presence of certain species
[00:41:11.383]and from these automated recording units we're able
[00:41:14.990]to look at, through sound, what birds are using these farms
[00:41:21.238]and get a sense of the seasonality of use
[00:41:24.902]and Larkin, do you recognize this song?
[00:41:29.255](laughing)
[00:41:32.615]Does anybody? (laughing)
[00:41:35.621]This one's an Upland Sandpiper song
[00:41:38.860]that you'd see in this picture here.
[00:41:42.794]We're also using some other cool technology
[00:41:45.714]to try to increase the number of nests that we find.
[00:41:49.231]One of the criticisms of our Phase I research is
[00:41:53.320]that we couldn't get at the fecundity of the birds,
[00:41:56.566]the experimental catchments were just too small.
[00:41:59.227]We couldn't get enough nests to get any kind
[00:42:02.359]of reliable measure of the survival of bird nests.
[00:42:07.052]We were able to do this in Phase II.
[00:42:09.164]We're using some technology, such as infrared thermal imager
[00:42:15.019]to try to increase the number of nests
[00:42:17.631]that we find in this environment.
[00:42:19.956]Here you see our two technicians with a little sparrow nest
[00:42:23.670]right there as well as using iButtons
[00:42:26.333]so that we don't have to visit these nests
[00:42:30.372]as often as one normally does
[00:42:32.828]by calibrating that iButton technology.
[00:42:35.852]Here's an example of using iButton data
[00:42:38.040]from a Vesper Sparrow nest.
[00:42:40.818]Here the nest was discovered on somewhere around,
[00:42:46.859]looks like the 13th of May last year.
[00:42:51.699]We can capture different phases.
[00:42:54.270]Each one of these black lines represent visiting the nest.
[00:42:58.395]We know something about what happened to that nest
[00:43:01.366]base on those people observing it.
[00:43:04.412]And then on the 6th of June last year,
[00:43:09.929]that nest was run over by a sprayer
[00:43:12.358]before we had visited it.
[00:43:14.680]Had it not been for the iButton
[00:43:16.364]we would have chocked that nest up as a failed nest,
[00:43:19.449]but based on these data, we knew that, you know,
[00:43:23.690]that nest was empty prior to that next visit.
[00:43:27.147]So hopefully we can improve the precision
[00:43:29.702]of some of our statistical models
[00:43:31.862]by using some of this iButton technology.
[00:43:35.017]Another thing we're looking at is also trying
[00:43:37.776]to understand some of the socioeconomic benefits
[00:43:40.938]of putting in small proportions
[00:43:43.670]of perennials in the landscape
[00:43:45.410]in addition to the environmental benefits.
[00:43:47.923]And one of the ways that we're looking at this is
[00:43:51.074]that not all farmland is created equal.
[00:43:54.657]And what these graphics show is profitability
[00:43:58.167]of Iowa farmland across four different years here.
[00:44:03.646]We can see the high crop prices in 2010,
[00:44:06.662]11 it was profitable farm just about anywhere in Iowa
[00:44:10.859]during those years, but starting in 2012, drought year,
[00:44:15.314]and then 2013, some areas were less profitable than others
[00:44:19.484]and then by 2015, with a downturn in prices,
[00:44:24.628]most areas were not profitable to farm
[00:44:28.653]without some kind of help from insurance.
[00:44:33.012]The cool thing about this is,
[00:44:35.959]that cycle is already well known,
[00:44:38.027]but with these precision data we can scale down
[00:44:40.314]to specific areas of farms
[00:44:42.141]to see which areas have been consistently unprofitable
[00:44:45.858]to farm and look at the potential to integrate perennials
[00:44:49.213]in those locations where we know
[00:44:51.362]farmers are consistently losing money.
[00:44:54.127]Therefore, overall, trying to shore up farm level economics.
[00:45:00.434]And here are some of my take home points.
[00:45:03.228]So, when we look at the STRIPS Program, what are we doing?
[00:45:06.926]What we're trying to do is hypothesis driven
[00:45:09.693]experimental research and develop systems-level
[00:45:13.627]understanding for the prairie strips practice,
[00:45:16.855]instead of, you know, most studies just looking
[00:45:19.232]at one measure or one disciplinary perspective,
[00:45:22.089]just water or just birds, we're seeking to integrate
[00:45:25.043]across all of these measures
[00:45:27.469]to get a more holistic understanding
[00:45:29.627]of the performance of this practice.
[00:45:31.933]We're working with farmers,
[00:45:34.278]we're working with other stakeholder groups
[00:45:37.188]and trying to address problems that they have brought
[00:45:41.076]forward for their farms or their groups.
[00:45:44.513]We're trying to address some of the soil erosion,
[00:45:46.714]the water quality problems,
[00:45:48.051]the biodiversity loss issues in the state.
[00:45:51.746]In terms of our initial hypothesis,
[00:45:54.310]our initial experiment suggests that yes,
[00:45:57.794]you do get disproportionate benefits
[00:46:00.398]when you integrate little bits of perennials in
[00:46:03.376]to those catchment areas and in Phase II we want to see
[00:46:06.808]if that holds up now that we're working
[00:46:09.119]at the commercial farm level.
[00:46:11.090]And we still have a lot of research to do.
[00:46:13.214]We've only been at the commercial farm level research
[00:46:16.369]for about two years now, so if this interests you at all,
[00:46:19.562]I encourage you to stay tuned.
[00:46:21.636]There's a lot more great science to come.
[00:46:25.121]And with that, again, I'll point out our funders
[00:46:27.123]and point you to some places
[00:46:28.757]where you can get more information or download some
[00:46:33.129]of the publications associated with the project.
[00:46:36.460]Thanks.
[00:46:37.799]Questions?
[00:46:38.776](audience applauding)
[00:46:45.357]And so does anybody have
[00:46:46.872]questions they would like to ask with the microphone?
[00:46:53.367]Yeah, it's interesting.
[00:46:54.681]I was curious to know if, down the road,
[00:46:57.442]if what the, you're looking at these watersheds
[00:47:00.520]but I'm thinking of even bigger watersheds
[00:47:02.970]and the water quality.
[00:47:05.152]Down the road are you thinking something like that,
[00:47:08.483]'cause I know there were some issues in Iowa
[00:47:10.507]regarding flooding and even some lawsuits developed
[00:47:14.247]from that and I'm wondering if this isn't some way
[00:47:18.428]of finding a solution to
[00:47:21.049]that flooding issue that's occurring.
[00:47:23.977]So is there thoughts about moving that
[00:47:27.130]to a bigger watershed scale even?
[00:47:30.428]Yeah, so moving it up from just the field scale
[00:47:34.122]to the watershed scale and certainly we show to reduction
[00:47:38.942]in the amount of runoff with the prairie strips
[00:47:42.920]in our initial experiment.
[00:47:44.183]We see a 42% reduction in the amount of runoff
[00:47:46.862]and we know that most, from some other work associated
[00:47:50.861]with this, we know that most of that water transpires back
[00:47:53.172]to the atmosphere.
[00:47:55.110]So there is a potential to address the amount
[00:48:00.813]of water flowing from the land, but of course,
[00:48:03.192]to actually achieve a reduction in flood,
[00:48:05.784]you would need to have the practice implemented
[00:48:08.417]across lots and lots of farm fields
[00:48:10.884]to actually show that kind of impact.
[00:48:17.655]Working with groups like the Iowa Soybean Association
[00:48:20.253]and the Nature Conservancy that are attempting watershed
[00:48:23.113]scale experiments in the state of Iowa,
[00:48:26.152]it's very difficult to do.
[00:48:29.316]Probably the best that we can do is continue
[00:48:31.674]to collect data now at the commercial farm field scale
[00:48:35.174]and then parametize models that will then be able
[00:48:39.719]to address the expected impact of, you know,
[00:48:42.675]lots and lots of fields in prairie strips
[00:48:44.853]and where, at what point, would you actually see a reduction
[00:48:48.182]in flooding as a result of scaling up the practice.
[00:48:52.327]I think, probably, the only way we could do that,
[00:48:56.544]at least within my career, is through modeling.
[00:49:07.847][Female Audience Member] Thank you.
[00:49:08.839]I really enjoyed your presentation.
[00:49:10.636]The 37% soil carbon number was pretty astonishing
[00:49:14.183]and I'm wondering if that's mostly
[00:49:16.634]in the more active carbon pools if you're familiar.
[00:49:19.750]So if that's the case, is there any worry
[00:49:23.217]that if this moves to commercial scales
[00:49:26.941]that farmers are going to take those perennial strips
[00:49:30.479]out of prairie and into production
[00:49:33.166]to kind of access that carbon
[00:49:35.116]and if you do have sort of this rotating strip crop,
[00:49:38.719]you know, system, if that's going
[00:49:41.027]to influence on these benefits you're seeing.
[00:49:44.707]Great question and when I present to farm groups
[00:49:49.456]that's almost always a question that comes up is
[00:49:52.935]how long do I need to leave the prairie strip
[00:49:55.119]in place (laughing)
[00:49:57.076]before I can start to farm it and capture the soil
[00:49:59.757]quality as well as the nutrients
[00:50:02.224]that have been stored there.
[00:50:04.213]And while we don't have a direct research based answer
[00:50:08.103]to that question from our experiment,
[00:50:09.840]everybody knows that when you take land out of CRP
[00:50:13.125]and put it into production over a few years
[00:50:15.690]you have a yield boost because of, you know,
[00:50:17.829]that build up in soil quality.
[00:50:20.222]You know, to be honest, for some of the people
[00:50:23.910]that we work with, you know, thinking about helping farmers
[00:50:29.296]put these on their land, just to have them take them out,
[00:50:32.930]they are not so excited about that.
[00:50:36.798]On the flip side, however, right now we're still talking
[00:50:42.149]about tolerable soil loss in the state
[00:50:45.712]and really if we want to sustain our population,
[00:50:49.384]if we want to sustain our economy beyond this century,
[00:50:54.020]we need to start talking about soil renewal
[00:50:56.270]and right now, we know that cover crops help,
[00:50:59.950]but we don't have a real good system to build soil
[00:51:06.524]in this part of the world and so I hope
[00:51:10.201]that we can study this long enough and work
[00:51:14.412]with enough farmers to actually develop a system
[00:51:16.940]where they would put prairie strips
[00:51:19.671]on their land for some amount of time,
[00:51:22.021]then think about, and build that soil, and then think
[00:51:25.881]about moving that prairie strip just downslope
[00:51:28.664]and start farming that area
[00:51:30.758]where they had just built up that soil quality.
[00:51:34.640]Not, you know, sacrifice all the benefits by saying,
[00:51:38.547]"We're gonna remove all the soil, prairie strips,"
[00:51:41.602]but let's just move them.
[00:51:43.492]And you can think about it as sort of a, you know,
[00:51:47.166]within our annual corn rotation or our corn soy rotation,
[00:51:51.872]you would have parts of the field that would be
[00:51:54.001]in a 10 to 15 year prairie rotation at that field level
[00:51:58.813]and thereby maintaining, you know, the environmental benefit
[00:52:02.639]that we measured as well as help that farmer
[00:52:05.868]to sustain their operation by building soil
[00:52:11.433]over a decade long time-scale.
[00:52:14.140]So, great question.
[00:52:24.899][Male Audience Member] Somewhat as a followup to that.
[00:52:27.121]I was thinking about, you know,
[00:52:29.172]"What do we need to do or what needs to be done
[00:52:31.226]"to maintain the strip biodiversity traits."
[00:52:35.395]Do they decline after time?
[00:52:38.084]Do you have to maintain them someway or not?
[00:52:40.765]And if it does decline, it makes sense
[00:52:42.831]to move the strips and just restart some of them.
[00:52:47.725]Yeah, it certainly, from the bird data
[00:52:50.708]that we collected from our initial experiment,
[00:52:53.177]we saw the birds come in very quickly
[00:52:56.274]and then kind of taper off and that's oftentimes seen
[00:52:59.765]in reconstructions, is that you get a,
[00:53:03.376]it takes, for the plants it takes awhile
[00:53:06.616]to establish the conservative plants,
[00:53:08.912]but the bioda respond to that change in structure
[00:53:12.456]and resource availability right away
[00:53:15.548]and that as, and there's lots of nutrients
[00:53:18.809](laughing)
[00:53:20.168]in those plants that are established first
[00:53:22.234]and then as so many of the nutrients get captured
[00:53:24.569]in that soil and root system, the plants,
[00:53:27.701]the above ground biomass isn't as awesome of a resource.
[00:53:33.264]And so we did see that in our initial bird and insect data.
[00:53:37.258]It boosted right away and then it kind of declined a little
[00:53:39.705]but, you know, I think from the standpoint
[00:53:41.984]of thinking about maintaining productive agricultural
[00:53:46.810]landscapes that also provide, you know, these benefits,
[00:53:51.180]it may make sense,
[00:53:53.928]from the standpoint of biodiversity as well.
[00:53:59.308]Certainly folks that I work with that are coming
[00:54:02.393]at this from the standpoint of trying to get as much prairie
[00:54:06.507]out there on the idle landscape as possible,
[00:54:10.222]they're not so excited about that
[00:54:12.297]because of course they would like to be establishing more
[00:54:14.757]of the historical and conservative prairie ecosystem.
[00:54:21.415]You know, it just depends on sort of what your baseline is.
[00:54:25.875]If your baseline is a 200 species native prairie,
[00:54:29.963]you're probably not gonna be
[00:54:31.187]so excited about rotating the strip.
[00:54:33.746]If your perspective is, you know, this is a landscape
[00:54:38.024]that's dominated by annual crops that are only active
[00:54:40.711]for a part of the year and that we want
[00:54:42.905]to improve that system, then the idea of turning it over
[00:54:49.152]in time to provide the greatest benefit,
[00:54:52.948]both personally at that farm scale to the owner and farmer,
[00:54:58.450]in addition to all of these societal benefits,
[00:55:01.534]then that will probably be attractive to you.
[00:55:15.244]Lisa, I wanted to draw together
[00:55:16.792]a couple of concepts that people have asked
[00:55:19.106]about in their questions.
[00:55:20.239]I guess my question's about, like, normalizing the idea
[00:55:23.450]of having a prairie strip in your field.
[00:55:25.347]So, Mark asked about, you know, how do we,
[00:55:28.214]basically, how do we get these into every field,
[00:55:30.742]like, you know, watershed wide
[00:55:33.731]and thinking about the idea
[00:55:37.300]of maybe maximizing this soil carbon savings,
[00:55:42.191]and you've talked to a lot of people in the project.
[00:55:46.737]Do you have thoughts about, I'm just thinking
[00:55:50.100]in a wheat fallow system, you know,
[00:55:52.160]that's normal to have a--
[00:55:53.305]Right.
[00:55:54.327]Fallow, wheat fallow stripped
[00:55:56.061]or rotations wheat fallow.
[00:55:57.710]It's normal in Wisconsin to have alfalfa, soybean,
[00:56:00.199]corn strips and rotate, so
[00:56:03.087](sighing)
[00:56:04.982]do you have thoughts about normalizing this
[00:56:07.484]to Iowa and Nebraska farmers so that it's just normal
[00:56:12.682]to have a strip like this in your field
[00:56:15.057]as part of the way you do business?
[00:56:20.083]Yeah, certainly one of the things
[00:56:22.272]that I'm really excited about in the project is, you know,
[00:56:27.008]truth in presentation, I'm coming at this
[00:56:29.183]from an ecologist's perspective
[00:56:31.509]and I'm lucky enough to work with, you know, hydrologists
[00:56:34.112]and entomologists and economists and sociologists.
[00:56:39.021]You know, it certainly coming at this as an ecologist,
[00:56:41.933]the opportunity to teach people a little bit of ecology
[00:56:45.692]by putting prairie on their farms is really exciting to me
[00:56:50.010]and I see that all the time
[00:56:51.607]in the farmers that we're working with.
[00:56:54.121]For example, the Wright Country farm that I showed you,
[00:56:57.002]that particular farmer is very much into water quality.
[00:57:02.541]He's got just about every single water quality practice
[00:57:06.057]one can have on his farm and his reason is
[00:57:10.234]that, you know, he's in the Boone River,
[00:57:12.274]Eagle Creek, Boone River watershed,
[00:57:14.036]which is a part of the Des Moines River watershed.
[00:57:16.224]His daughter lives in Des Moines and he doesn't want
[00:57:18.496]to be, you know, the farmer that is causing the decline
[00:57:21.307]in drinking water (laughing)
[00:57:23.682]that his daughter needs to pay for,
[00:57:25.362]right down in Des Moines, so he's really into water quality
[00:57:28.589]but, you know, he put the prairie strips out there
[00:57:31.815]because he saw the nitrogen benefits, basically.
[00:57:35.275]But now going out with him,
[00:57:37.894]he actually has some great species on his farm.
[00:57:43.363]He has Upland Sandpipers that are making use of cover crop
[00:57:46.082]and that's pretty much the prairie strip.
[00:57:48.113]He has Prairie Skinks which is another species
[00:57:51.372]of greatest conservation need on his farm.
[00:57:53.710]Going out there now, he's like sending me pictures
[00:57:57.168]of Monarch butterflies and the Upland Sandpipers
[00:58:00.420]and tells me about when he turns over the cover board
[00:58:03.396]and what he sees out there.
[00:58:05.795]He was not at all interested in bio,
[00:58:08.458](laughing)
[00:58:09.703]biodiversity but now as a result of, you know,
[00:58:12.440]seeing the prairie strips and being out there
[00:58:15.590]and seeing the data that we're collecting,
[00:58:17.241]all the sudden he's becoming a biodiversity guy
[00:58:19.947]in addition to a water quality guy.
[00:58:22.406]You know, and now he's telling his neighbors about that too.
[00:58:24.999]So I'm really excited about this aspect of
[00:58:27.886]sort of reembracing our prairie roots from this.
[00:58:33.697]You know, the entry point is a very functional one,
[00:58:36.770]but building on that functional, you know,
[00:58:40.763]building soil quality, you know, keeping my nutrients,
[00:58:44.528]improving the image of farmers
[00:58:48.183]from a water quality standpoint,
[00:58:50.373]to thinking about appreciating Monarch butterflies
[00:58:53.585]and getting excited about Upland Sandpipers.
[00:58:56.800]To me that's a really beautiful transition
[00:58:59.357]and I hope it's one that we can expand
[00:59:01.984]across the entire Cornbelt.
[00:59:04.670]If I could have one wish for the future,
[00:59:07.626]that's what it'd be.
[00:59:08.716](laughing)
[00:59:15.438][Male Audience Member] So, it was
[00:59:18.402]a very interesting presentation and Larkin's question,
[00:59:21.663]I think is related to something that I was thinking
[00:59:25.701]about asking you but I think it could be really interesting
[00:59:28.471]to look at, sort of, the social community
[00:59:31.409]or social networks that exist in farming communities
[00:59:33.784]and whether those networks themselves promote the adoption
[00:59:37.016]of your, of these strips.
[00:59:39.751]In the communities, that I think from, you may have people
[00:59:43.841]in the sociology or economics realm
[00:59:45.508]that are already interested in looking at those things.
[00:59:47.755]But I think that that could be something
[00:59:49.347]that would be interesting to look at.
[00:59:50.688]Yeah.
[00:59:51.663][Male Audience Member] So, anyway,
[00:59:53.744]just a thought there.
[00:59:55.582]I don't really know that I have anything
[00:59:57.039]for you to respond to.
[00:59:58.040]Right.
[00:59:59.107][Male Audience Member] But I was also gonna ask
[01:00:00.645]if you could expound a little bit on the,
[01:00:02.433]when you talk about targeting socioeconomic benefits,
[01:00:05.266]particularly in lower profitable,
[01:00:08.027]areas of lower profitability.
[01:00:10.657]if you could explain a little bit more
[01:00:12.681]what that the thought is there.
[01:00:16.082]Yeah, well, first of all, with your first comment,
[01:00:18.667]so we're working across, you know,
[01:00:21.775]a very wide geographic area which is very challenging to do
[01:00:28.393]but one of our motivations in attempting to do it
[01:00:31.170]is because we know, basically, the adoption diffusion model
[01:00:35.113]works really well within agricultural
[01:00:38.700](laughing) locations, right?
[01:00:42.846]The way that farmers tend to learn about practices
[01:00:46.783]is, you know, you have the innovator, early adopter
[01:00:50.391]that adopts them and all their neighbors watch them
[01:00:52.773]and see if they're successful with it
[01:00:54.536]and if their neighbor is successful,
[01:00:56.823]they might think about, you know,
[01:00:58.487]the majority might think about putting it on their farm.
[01:01:01.484]And so we think about these sites as, you know, lighthouses
[01:01:03.744]basically for the prairie strips practice.
[01:01:07.049]And certainly at this point we are working
[01:01:10.131]with the innovators and early adopters.
[01:01:12.231]There's, you know, I would say very clearly
[01:01:16.279]that's the population that we're working with.
[01:01:20.114]So that's one aspect and we're okay with that,
[01:01:23.418](laughing)
[01:01:25.058]because we still feel like we're in beta testing mode
[01:01:28.435]and so it's better to beta test something
[01:01:30.631]with someone that's a little bit more willing
[01:01:33.330]to well one, work with a bunch of academics
[01:01:38.534]that might have some crazy ideas sometimes
[01:01:41.777]and then also just take the risks associated
[01:01:45.800]with a new practice so we're fine with that at this point.
[01:01:49.030]In terms of your second question,
[01:01:51.043]the profitability piece.
[01:01:53.631]Certainly that idea of trying
[01:01:58.192]to improve farm level profitability
[01:02:00.902]is very exciting within Iowa now.
[01:02:05.633]You're not only hearing farmers sort of beginning
[01:02:10.413]to resonate with the idea, but also lots of folks
[01:02:13.917]that are working in the agri-business sector
[01:02:16.639]are employing companies to help with data management
[01:02:22.472]to look at, you know, what are the areas of your farm
[01:02:25.990]where it's worth investing in that particular seed trait
[01:02:29.154]or it's worth putting on more nitrogen and lime.
[01:02:33.613]Maybe the whole field doesn't need lime,
[01:02:35.475]maybe it's just this part and so, I mean,
[01:02:39.757]that's one way it's kind of thinking
[01:02:41.560]about raising the bottom, right,
[01:02:43.205]the lowest performing anchors that way,
[01:02:46.446]but another way to think about it is, well,
[01:02:48.807]in some areas, if you're pouring on extra nutrients
[01:02:51.963]they just might not stick.
[01:02:54.045]The soil quality is already so poor, you know,
[01:02:56.424]that bald nob or whatever, that you can pour on, you know,
[01:03:00.378]more fertilizers but you're still gonna be, you know,
[01:03:03.352]losing them so from a profitability standpoint,
[01:03:05.792]maybe it does make sense to put
[01:03:07.830]in a perennial vegetation type,
[01:03:09.885]maybe that could be prairie and build that soil quality
[01:03:13.319]for some period of time at some point
[01:03:15.885]and then you'll put it back into production
[01:03:18.514]and it might make it, at that point,
[01:03:20.262]worth farming that ground.
[01:03:22.569]It takes a lot of sophisticated modeling
[01:03:25.321]to figure this out on how to do it,
[01:03:28.692]so I'm excited working with,
[01:03:31.369]especially there's a group called Agfelver out of Aimes
[01:03:36.108]that has the capacity to run the really huge computer
[01:03:42.911]simulation models that were required to develop
[01:03:46.014]those graphics that I shared with you on that piece.
[01:03:54.234]Alright, well, thank you everybody for coming
[01:03:55.703]and thank you so much, Lisa, for a wonderful presentation.
[01:03:57.937]Yeah, thanks so much for having me.
[01:03:59.218]Great questions. (audience applauding)

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Prairie STRIPS: From research to action

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