Earlier this year Will was featured in a SEAS article detailing his background, sources of inspiration, and contributions to a collaborative research project focused on urine-derived fertilizer (UDF). Read all about it here!
Will was recently awarded a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (NSF GRFP)—a competitive fellowship that recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students who have demonstrated the potential to be high-achieving scientists. His research will investigate the effects of cover crop grazing on soil carbon and nutrient cycling dynamics through an on-farm experiment using cattle to graze overwintering cover crops in grain rotations. We are excited to continue researching integrated crop-livestock systems through Will’s dissertation work. Congratulations Will!
Against the odds: network and institutional pathways enabling agricultural diversification. One Earth.
Three bright spots in the United States, Brazil, and Malawi show how farming communities have found pathways to agricultural diversification despite major structural constraints.
Congratulations to Marta, Alison, Anne Elise, and Kent for three new papers on the ecosystem benefits of cover crops.
These explore:
1) how unique management legacies, and resulting soil fertility properties, influence the functions provided by a cover crop mixture within the Main Cropping Systems Experiment at Kellogg Biological Station (Plumhoff, M., Connell, R.K., Bressler, A., and J. Blesh. 2022. Management history and mixture evenness affect the ecosystem services from a crimson clover-rye cover crop. Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment 339. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agee.2022.108155.)
2) whether increasing cover crop functional diversity with a legume-grass mixture can reduce pulse emissions of N2O in the weeks following tillage in two field sites with contrasting soil fertility properties (Bressler, A. and J. Blesh. 2022. Episodic N2O emissions following tillage of a legume-grass cover crop mixture. Biogeosciences 19, 3169–3184. https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-19-3169-2022.)
3) the effects of two diversification practices—vetch-oat cover cropping and cucumber-snow pea intercropping—on N cycling and productivity across a farm management gradient. The field experiment spanned 14 farms in southern Brazil with different long-term management histories, ranging from conventional tobacco to agroecological mixed crop-livestock systems. (Stratton, A.E., Comin, J.J., Siddique, I., Zak, D.R., Filipini, L., Lucas, R.R., and J. Blesh. 2022. Assessing cover crop and intercrop performance along a farm management gradient. Agriculture Ecosystems and Environment 332: 107925. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agee.2022.107925.)
After working closely with Etienne this year as a part of UM’s Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program (UROP), Makayla presented a poster on her research at last week’s UROP symposium. Nice work, Makayla!
On March 11, Alison presented and successfully defended her dissertation, entitled “A Social-Ecological Analysis of Ecological Nutrient Management using Cover Crops in the U.S. Midwest.” Congratulations, Alison, on this major achievement!!
Etienne was recently awarded a USDA NIFA Predoctoral Fellowship to support her dissertation research and career development. Her research project, titled “Understanding Variation in Cover Crop Performance Across Spatial Scales,” uses participatory approaches to reduce uncertainty surrounding cover crop growth across different environmental and management conditions on working farms in the Great Lakes region. Congratulations, Etienne!
Congratulations to Alison and Etienne! Alison’s paper in Society & Natural Resources reports findings from a case study showing how the National Wildlife Foundation’s Cover Crop Champions program leverages strategic communication methods and farmer networks to increase cover crop adoption.
Bressler, A., Plumhoff, M., Hoey, L., and J. Blesh. 2021. Cover Crop Champions: Linking strategic communication approaches with farmer networks to support cover crop adoption. Society and Natural Resources. DOI: 10.1080/08941920.2021.1980165
Etienne’s paper in Ecosphere, based on a literature review and a field experiment conducted at the UM Campus Farm, highlights the role of intraspecific trait variation in explaining ecosystem services from cover crops.
Herrick, E. and J. Blesh. 2021. The importance of intraspecific trait variation in cover crops. Ecosphere. https://doi.org/10.1002/ecs2.3817
Anne Elise Stratton defended her PhD in July, 2021, and Marta Plumhoff and Ali Surdoval defended their Master’s theses in April and August, 2021, respectively. We wish them well in the next stages of their careers!
Soil and Agroecosystems Lab 