The multi-year collaboration aims to leverage farmer knowledge and experience and combine it with soil sampling to determine how soil conditions are impacted by being on the edge of agricultural fields, leading to useful management recommendations for creating productive farmlands.
Intensive agriculture requires widespread adoption of conservation practices to mitigate loss of ecosystem services. Planting native perennial vegetation at the edge-of-fields (EOF) is a conservation practice shown to improve soil health and protect water quality. The deep root systems and stiff stems of perennials provide a suite of benefits for farmers and their operations, including reducing soil erosion, nutrient uptake and retention, and sequestering carbon.
Not all EOF practices provide equal impacts, however. While some research has shown that EOF practices improve biodiversity and water quality, belowground benefits such as soil health remain understudied. Comparing EOF practices on working farms with variable agronomic and environmental conditions can help us understand the context in which EOF practices alter soil biological, chemical, and physical properties.
KBS LTER researchers are collaborating with Michigan farmers to assess how EOF practices impact soil biological health. By having the evidence to know the conditions necessary for soil health changes, researchers and outreach specialists can better communicate the benefits of conservation practices to farmers and landowners. Current KBS LTER graduate student Rachel Drobnak, who leads the research, says “Conservation practices are all about adoption, so without going out to working farms and making connections with farmers, these practices have limited adoption. I find it incredibly important to make each farmer collaborator an important piece of my project: their land is not the only reason I want to work with them. I care deeply about their knowledge, experience, and insights.”
With funding partially from a SARE grant award, researchers from Christine Sprunger’s lab and Lauren Sullivan’s lab, in collaboration with researchers from Western Michigan University, conducted soil sampling in July 2024 on 8 working fields across Michigan, involving 6 farmer collaborators. Soil samples were collected in each EOF strip and at varying distances from the EOF practice, for a total of 64 soil samples per field. Sampling will be conducted again in Summer 2025, with additional farm sites added to the project.