Research

Prairie strips are a Midwestern conservation practice where portions of agricultural fields are converted to restored prairies, in patches or strips. Prairie strips are successful at increasing aboveground biodiversity, filtering nitrates and preventing soil erosion. 

However, we still have a poor understanding of the belowground impacts of prairie strips on soil biodiversity and ecological processes such as nitrogen cycling. I hypothesize that prairie strips create more suitable habitat for more diverse and structure nematode communities, and nitrogen pools will be more tightly regulated (be less subject to losses via inorganic-N). To address these hypotheses, I assess soil nitrogen and nematode dynamics within the KBS-LTER prairie strips over three growing seasons.

Early results indicate that prairie strips, compared to adjacent cropland, have consistently higher mineralizable carbon (an early indicator of increased microbial activity and microbe "food"), and lower nitrate-N. Stay tuned for more results!

As a conservation practice, prairie strips are intended to be adopted widely across Midwestern farms. However, as is often the case for conservation, prairie strips face low and slow adoption for a myriad of reasons. One strategy to improve adoption is to increase our understanding of the benefits and success of prairie strips in different farm contexts, and to communicate this to farmers. For this project, I wanted to determine how prairie strips behave under different farm conditions. I also wanted to know how prairie strips compare to similar practices, like grass buffer strips.

In partnership with Michigan farmers, I conducted an on-farm soil survey within established strips (prairies and buffers) and in adjacent cropland to test the soil health benefits of this practice across soil types and management strategies.

Early results show that both strip types increase mineralizable carbon relative to adjacent cropland, and that prairie strips accumulate POXC (a soil carbon indicator) more quickly with soil moisture relative to buffer strips.

Conservation practices are promoted because they are good at restoring lost habitat, biodiversity, and ecosystem services due to intensive agriculture. Yet, they are not widely adopted by farmers, even when this information is shared. One major barrier to adopting conservation practices like no-till or cover crops is a lack of information about their long-term financial costs and returns. 

Do conservation practices save farmers money in the long-term? And will the long-term use of conservation practices buffer crop yield losses during extreme weather events? 

I will explore these questions using the 35-year-old KBS-LTER Main Cropping Systems Experiment (MCSE), where data has been collected on crop yields and environmental variables for four cropping systems with different levels of conservation. I plan to use econometric modeling approaches to robustly link net returns with conservation practices, and to further correlate economic output with intra-annual weather shocks, like short-term drought.

In the early 2010s, quinoa became a popular superfood in the United States and other Global North countries. International demand for quinoa increased exponentially followed by a rapid increase in price. To the average consumer, higher prices may seem positive for the indigenous communities who grow quinoa in the Andean region of Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador. However, the unregulated "boom" in the global quinoa market led to multiple negative environmental and cultural consequences for these communities. A subsequent "bust" in prices between 2014-2015 exacerbated consequences.

As a Professorial Assistant mentored by Dr. Krista Isaacs, I spent four years synthesizing the quinoa boom-and-bust as one example of a larger issue in global food systems: the consequences of indigenous crop globalization.

The craft beverage industry is increasingly becoming an important part of Michigan’s economy. A current goal of the Michigan brewing and distilling industry is to provide local sources of malting barley to craft brewers and maltsters. Understanding winter barley varietal performance is important for producers, since varieties can differ widely in yield, disease resistance, phenology, and quality measurements.

MSU Extension and MSU AgBioResearch conducted a five-year winter barley variety trial at the Kellogg Biological Station (as of 2021), testing dozens of varieties for yield performance, grain quality, and phenology.

As a MSU Extension intern, I assessed which varieties were consistently high yielding and of high grain quality as well as which varieties were susceptible to pre-harvest sprout. You can view the report I made here!

Ridge tillage is a conservation practice used in agriculture where soil is built up in crop rows each year to conserve water and soil nutrients. In combination with rye cover crop, this system was hypothesized to increase plant-available nitrogen and potentially improve crop yields.

A four-state, four-year cropping trial was conducted across the Midwest to test the effects of a ridge tillage and cover crop system on a corn-soybean rotation. 

For an independent study project, I analyzed this dataset and found that in ridge tillage had insignificant effects on crop yields or available nitrogen. Incorporating rye cover crop, however, increased soybean yields by 2 bu/A, on average, and did not impact corn yields. Cover cropping did not impact soil nitrogen availability, although research shows that rye can sometimes "tie up" nitrogen to the following cash crop.