Progress 10/01/05 to 09/30/09
Outputs
OUTPUTS: Students graduated: Julie Doll (fka Woodis), PhD Agronomy, May 2008. Herika Kummel, MS Agroecology Aug 2009. Invited presentations: Restoring ecosystem services to grasslands. Environmental Science, Policy & Management Colloquium, University of California, Berkeley. 10 March 2008. Pasture management for carbon sequestration and nitrogen retention. Center for Grassland Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 15 November 2006. Manipulating resource availability to establish prairie grasses in grazed pastures. Program in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology seminar, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 20 September 2006. Manipulating disturbance regimes to restore components of native grasslands. Department of Plant Sciences, University of California, Davis, 11 July 2005. Outreach: Agronomy Field Day, Arlington ARS, 27 Aug 2009. Organics Field Day, Arlington ARS, 26 Aug 2009. Wisconsin Associated County Extension Committees, Arlington ARS, 25 Aug 2009. North Central ASA field day, Arlington ARS, 23 Jul 2009. Wisconsin Grazing Conference, Stevens Point, WI, 19 Feb 2009. Wisconsin Invasive Plant Conference [declined], Madison, WI, 21 Feb 2009. Wednesday Night at the Lab, Biotechnology Center, UW-Madison, 30 July 2008. Wisconsin turfgrass field day, OJ Noer ARS, 22 July 2008. Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection Board Meeting, Spring Green, WI, 13 May 2008. Wisconsin Grazing Conference, Stevens Point, WI, 15 Feb 2008. Southwest Wisconsin Profitable Pastures, Lancaster ARS, 12 January 2008. Turfgrass Producers International field day, OJ Noer ARS, 26 August 2007. Field day-farmer collaborators, AZ Farm, Oregon, WI, 15 August 2007. Pasture walk, Salas Farm, Burnett, WI 22 August 2007. Pasture walk, Cates Farm, Spring Green, WI 25 June 2007. Grassland ecology in managed grazing systems. Central Wisconsin Grazing Network, 27 February 2007. Review of managed grazing research. Agronomy/Soils Field Day, Arlington ARS, 30 August 2006. Warm-season grasses for grazing. Grazing Lands Technical Team (G-Team) Meeting, Necedah Wildlife Refuge, 14 June 2006. Blending conservation and production in grass-based ecosystems of southern Wisconsin. Sustainability and Global Environment Seminar, UW-Madison, 26 April 2006. Ecological complexity of pasture ecosystems. Wisconsin Grazing Conference, Stevens Point, WI 10 Feb 2006. Is livestock grazing a conservation practice Management effects on greenhouse gas emissions, nitrate leaching, and prairie grass restoration. Madison Ecology Group Fall Symposium, UW-Madison, 30 September 2005. Panel discussion on agroecology issues. Environmental Science 901, UW-Madison 16 Nov 2005. Can native prairie grasses recruit and persist in grazed pasture plant communities of southern Wisconsin Wisconsin Crop Improvement Annual Meeting, UW-Madison, 30 Nov 2005. PARTICIPANTS: Julie Doll, PhD student. Now Education and Outreach Coordinator at Kellogg Biological Station's Long-term Ecological Research station. Herika Kummel, MS student. Now PhD student in Agronomy at UW-Madison. Richard Cates, Jr., farmer and director of the Wisconsin School for Beginning Dairy and Livestock Farmers. Work was conducted on his farm and he serves as an ambassador for this research. TARGET AUDIENCES: Farmers, land managers, policymakers, and scientists. PROJECT MODIFICATIONS: Not relevant to this project.
Impacts
Food, fiber and energy represent a type of ecosystem service provided by farms - provisioning services. Other types of ecosystem services may not earn the farmer money, but support and regulate the provisioning services. Depending on how farms are managed, they provide varying degrees of carbon sequestration, water purification, and wildlife habitat. Increasingly, society is considering paying farmers for services that regulate climate or purify water. For instance, carbon markets are developing that may pay farmers for practices that sequester carbon in soils Most graziers in the upper Midwest use nonnative cool-season grasses because they are very productive and their forage quality is relatively high. Many farmers are interested in using warm-season grasses native to the tallgrass prairie for forage because their native status is attractive and they use water and nutrients more efficiently than cool-season grasses. In Wisconsin, tallgrass prairie once dominated over two million acres, but less than one percent of that native prairie remains today. Incorporating native, warm-season grasses into cool-season pastures offers a compromise between complete restoration and no native species in the landscape. Compared to cool season pasture, warm-season native grasses can potentially: Balance forage production during hot summer months (provisioning service), Restore native plants to the landscape (cultural service), Increase soil carbon sequestration (regulating and supporting services), Enhance wildlife habitat (regulating and supporting services), Advertise land stewardship (cultural service)
Publications
- JACKSON RD, Paine LK. 2006. Revisiting Robel's visual obstruction method for estimating standing crop in grasslands Forage and Grazinglands [published online Dec 2006]
- JACKSON RD, Paine LK, Woodis JE. 2010. Persistence of restored C4 grasses under summer bison grazing in eastern tallgrass prairie. Restoration Ecology, in press
- Doll JE, Bouressa E, Haubensak KA, JACKSON RD. 2010. Testing agronomic and restoration management to establish native warm-season grasses in nonnative cool-season pastures. Restoration Ecology, in press
- Bouressa E, Woodis JE, Cates RL, JACKSON RD. 2010. Burning and grazing cool-season grasslands to promote persistence of native, warm-season grasses. Ecological Restoration, in press
- Doll JE, Brink GE, Cates RL, JACKSON RD. 2009. Production and quality of cool-season pasture under managed grazing and burning regimes in southern Wisconsin. Journal of Sustainable Agriculture 33:512-527
- Doll JE, JACKSON RD. 2009. Why would a farmer consider native grasses for grazed temperate pastures Journal of Soil and Water Conservation 64:276-285
- Bleier JS, JACKSON RD. 2007. Manipulating the quantity, quality, and manner of C addition to reduce soil inorganic N and increase C4:C3 grass biomass. Restoration Ecology 15:684-691
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Progress 01/01/07 to 12/31/07
Outputs
OUTPUTS: Activities: We collected data in 2007 that continued to demonstrate the effects of disturbance and soil amendment combinations on pasture production, native grass recruitment, and community composition. Events: We extended our results to the farming community by participating in pasture walks and giving a presentation at the SW WI Profitable Pastures Meeting.
PARTICIPANTS: PI: Randall Jackson, design experiment, collect and analyze data, write reports and peer-reviewed manuscripts. Grad student: Julie Woodis (nee Doll), collect and analyze data, write dissertation, give presentations, write peer-reviewed manuscripts
TARGET AUDIENCES: Farmers, agency personnel, extension agents, ecologists, agronomists
Impacts
Managed grazing for livestock production is a growing enterprise in the temperate United States. While grass-based farming often restores plowed land to its native biome, perennial grassland, most farmers sow non-native species and manage for low-diversity plant assemblages. However, higher plant functional group diversity in pastures has many potential benefits. We employed an agroecological framework to integrate native warm-season grasses into cool-season pastures by formulating specific social, ecological, and agronomic research objectives. First, we constructed a written questionnaire assessing Wisconsin farmer attitudes towards and perceptions of native grasses. Thirty-five percent of farmers indicated that they are interested in native grasses for pasture use, but a large majority of respondents reported that they are unfamiliar with the identification and establishment of native grasses. The most important predictor of farmer interest in native grasses was
perception of how native grasses affect the environment. Second, in a field experiment, three native grasses were drill-seeded into an existing pasture at separate times (spring or fall), and combinations of disturbance (grazing or burning) and soil amendments (nitrogen, carbon, or ambient) were applied to promote their establishment. Native grasses did not establish where nitrogen was applied, and the carbon amendment limited recruitment compared to the ambient treatment. For non-nitrogen plots, establishment was greater under burning vs. grazing and spring vs. fall seeding. An ordination analysis showed that shifts in the plant community were driven more by management than by environmental factors. Treatments also affected pasture production, but the nature of the effect varied by year. Over 50% of the variability within the forage quality parameters was attributed to non-management variables. Third, a greenhouse experiment that tested how defoliation initiation, timing, and
intensity affected production of smooth brome (cool-season) and big bluestem (warm-season) grasses showed different effects of management on similar metrics: total available forage and aboveground production. Smooth brome produced more total biomass, although during late-summer months big bluestem yielded more available forage. In addition to generating information that informs plant ecology and farm management, our interdisciplinary approach allowed us to target gaps in current research and better understand agroecosystems as a whole.
Publications
- JACKSON RD, Paine LK, Woodis JE. 2008. Persistence of restored C4 grasses under summer bison grazing in eastern tallgrass prairie. Restoration Ecology, In press.
- Bleier JS, JACKSON RD. 2007. Manipulating the quantity, quality, and manner of C addition to reduce soil inorganic N and increase C4:C3 grass biomass. Restoration Ecology.
- Doll JE, JACKSON RD. 2007. Ecoagriculture. Ecological Society of America Annual Meetings, 5-10 August 2007, San Jose, CA
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Progress 01/01/06 to 12/31/06
Outputs
Root and shoot response to pasture management. In a temperate cool-season pasture, we measured above- and below-ground production under two disturbance regimes (fire and grazing) and three nutrient levels (ambient, C+, and N+) in a split-split-split plot field experiment. While burning resulted in higher root:shoot ratios than grazing, N fertilization decreased the root:shoot ratio under both disturbance regimes. To better understand the effects of grazing on C allocation patterns, we conducted a factorial glasshouse experiment manipulating the defoliation frequency (weekly or monthly) and intensity (5 or 10 cm residual) of cool-season (Bromus inermis) and warm-season (Andropogon gerardii) grasses. Warm-season grasses generally have higher root:shoot ratios and greater belowground C than cool-season grasses, but there is a paucity of research comparing C allocation between them under identical defoliation regimes. In our experiment, both the frequency and intensity of
defoliation significantly affected the cool-season grass root:shoot ratio, but these treatments had no effect on the warm-season grass. Farmer attitudes about using native grasses in production. In March 2006 we mailed a questionnaire to 800 Wisconsin graziers included on a GrassWorks, Inc. mailing list. After holding focus groups with graziers to clarify grazing terminology and concepts, we developed this questionnaire in order to determine Wisconsin graziers' use of and attitudes towards native grasses. The questionnaire was reviewed by experts in the fields of applied social research, survey methodology, and farming systems before being pilot-tested on a small group of graziers. The response rate was 56%. 1. Approximately 17% of graziers indicated they have native grasses on their grass-based farms. 2. Of these farmers, 1/2 established the grasses themselves. 3. Less than 50% received financial or technical aid for the establishment. 4. Our results showed that 35% of respondents
were interested in using native grasses in their pastures. 5. Many indicated no opinion on this issue, which could reflect the lack of research on, education about, and knowledge of the use of native grasses in grazing systems in this region. We subjected many variables (farm characteristics, socio-demographic information, and opinion responses) to a regression tree analysis to predict interest in native grasses. The most important predictors were beliefs in 1) how native grasses affect the environment and 2) how native grasses affect production. The regression tree explained 63% of variability in grazier response.
Impacts
With an increasing amount of land under managed grazing and interest rising in the use of warm-season grasses in the Upper Midwest, it is important to understand whether graziers will use native grasses and how management will affect C allocation in temperate pastures.
Publications
- Doll, J.E., R.L. Cates, and R.D. Jackson. 2006. Disturbance and soil amendment effects on C allocation in grazed pastures. ASA-CSSA-SSSA annual meeting. November, Indianapolis, Indiana. 12-16 November 2006
- Doll, J.E., Cates, R.L., Jackson, R.D. 2006. Native prairie grasses for grazed pastures: Are graziers interested? National SARE Conference, 16 August 2006.
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