Campus Units
Natural Resource Ecology and Management, Statistics, Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering, Agronomy, Sociology, Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture
Document Type
Article
Publication Version
Published Version
Publication Date
10-2017
Journal or Book Title
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Volume
114
Issue
42
First Page
11247
Last Page
11252
DOI
10.1073/pnas.1620229114
Abstract
Loss of biodiversity and degradation of ecosystem services from agricultural lands remain important challenges in the United States despite decades of spending on natural resource management. To date, conservation investment has emphasized engineering practices or vegetative strategies centered on monocultural plantings of nonnative plants, largely excluding native species from cropland. In a catchment-scale experiment, we quantified the multiple effects of integrating strips of native prairie species amid corn and soybean crops, with prairie strips arranged to arrest run-off on slopes. Replacing 10% of cropland with prairie strips increased biodiversity and ecosystem services with minimal impacts on crop production. Compared with catchments containing only crops, integrating prairie strips into cropland led to greater catchment-level insect taxa richness (2.6-fold), pollinator abundance (3.5-fold), native bird species richness (2.1-fold), and abundance of bird species of greatest conservation need (2.1-fold). Use of prairie strips also reduced total water runoff from catchments by 37%, resulting in retention of 20 times more soil and 4.3 times more phosphorus. Corn and soybean yields for catchments with prairie strips decreased only by the amount of the area taken out of crop production. Social survey results indicated demand among both farming and nonfarming populations for the environmental outcomes produced by prairie strips. If federal and state policies were aligned to promote prairie strips, the practice would be applicable to 3.9 million ha of cropland in Iowa alone.
Rights
Works produced by employees of the U.S. Government as part of their official duties are not copyrighted within the U.S. The content of this document is not copyrighted.
Language
en
File Format
application/pdf
Recommended Citation
Tyndall, John C.; Schulte-Moore, Lisa A.; Niemi, Jarad; Helmers, Matthew J.; Liebman, Matthew Z.; Arbuckle, J. Gordon Jr.; James, David E.; Kalka, Randall K.; O'Neal, Matthew E.; Tomer, Mark D.; Asbjornsen, Heidi; Drobney, Pauline; Neal, Jeri; Van Ryswyk, Gary; and Witte, Christopher C., "Prairie strips improve biodiversity and the delivery of multiple ecosystem services from corn–soybean croplands" (2017). Natural Resource Ecology and Management Publications. 247.
https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/nrem_pubs/247
Included in
Agricultural and Resource Economics Commons, Agricultural Science Commons, Climate Commons, Environmental Studies Commons, Longitudinal Data Analysis and Time Series Commons, Natural Resources Management and Policy Commons, Soil Science Commons
Comments
This article is published as Schulte, Lisa A., Jarad Niemi, Matthew J. Helmers, Matt Liebman, J. Gordon Arbuckle, David E. James, Randall K. Kolka et al. "Prairie strips improve biodiversity and the delivery of multiple ecosystem services from corn–soybean croplands." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2017): 201620229. 10.1073/pnas.1620229114. Posted with permission.