Investigators at the KBS LTER are working with Michigan Department of Natural Resources staff to determine how replacing under-yielding areas of croplands with native perennial plants can improve biodiversity and ecosystem services while having the lowest loss in agricultural production. The study represents co-production of knowledge through identifying shared goals and questions, and a great opportunity to scale up long term ecological knowledge generated at the LTER to the farm scale.
Agricultural landscapes represent a balancing act between different interests and goals. These lands produce our food and must make a profit for farmers; however, they are also home to native species and can provide benefits like game hunting, recreation, and environmental services like pollination.
One approach to maximizing benefits for both conservation and agriculture is to reassess the parts of croplands that are under-yielding – in other words, areas that are not giving a lot of bang for their buck. In the U.S Midwest, these areas add up to 23 million acres.
One possible solution to making them more productive is to plant them with native perennials rather than crops, with the idea that the increase in ecosystem services and benefits to biodiversity will be more valuable than leaving those areas as poorly performing croplands.
A new collaborative study between the Michigan Department of Natural Resources (DNR), farmers, and KBS LTER is working to understand the impacts of replacing underperforming croplands with native perennials. The group has identified areas within corn-soy fields at the Allegan State Game Area in Michigan that are not economically profitable for the farmers who work them. Starting in 2025, portions of these lands will be taken out of production, and in consultation with farmers, planted into native prairie.
The layout of the prairie plantings will capture various treatments and configurations, such as prairie strips through the middle of fields or rectangles along field borders. This experimental design will be able to address farmer-led questions, like whether prairie strips can increase farm profit, as well as fundamental ecological research questions, like whether patch shape and location will impact biodiversity and soil health. The results will be interpreted by the LTER team, and shared with farmers to co-develop better strategies for managing agricultural ecosystems.
The team includes LTER scientists Nick Haddad, Sarah Evans, and Christine Sprunger. The DNR leaders include Don Poppe, Wildlife Biologist; Mike Richardson, Wildlife Technician; and Fahimeh Baziari, DNR staff and former coordinator of the LTER MiSTRIPS program.
According to Don Poppe, “Here at Allegan State Game Area, we are always looking to collaborate with partners new and old. Connections between conservation professionals in SW Michigan and beyond are key to building a resilient future for our wild lands and animals. This project, brought to us and led by KBS LTER, is a perfect fit for our habitat management goals to benefit everything we care about, from pollinators to pheasants. We have the agricultural landscape on DNR managed property that can be used as a test site to prove the many potential benefits for inclusion of wildflowers and other native plants in low yielding agricultural fields. The work we do on our lands to benefit pollinators and wildlife could be further enhanced by similar work in low yielding agricultural areas on private land. We are excited for this and future collaborations.”