In the coming years, agriculture will be called on to feed a growing population. While intensification can help meet this need, it comes with severe tradeoffs such as increased greenhouse gas emissions, nutrient and chemical pollution, loss of biodiversity, and farmer stress. Adoption of conservation practices on farms can lessen these harms, but in order to predict how and when this occurs, we need a basic understanding of the ecological processes involved.

Since 1988, research at the Kellogg Biological Station Long-term Ecological Research site - KBS LTER - has advanced our understanding of the cropping systems that underpin U.S. agriculture. It provides science-backed information on agricultural landscapes to help make farming both profitable and good for the environment. For this grant, KBS LTER worked to integrate long-term scientific research, education, and engagement with stakeholders and decision-makers to directly inform agricultural management and policies from local to global scales.

KBS LTER connects with the real world, and studies agroecosystem responses to two of the most intense global changes - climate and land use change. The main focus of this award was on resilience, or the ability for an agricultural system to maintain function in response to disturbance. Research from the KBS LTER  identified less intensive farming practices that increase yield and mitigate greenhouse gasses, conserve nutrients, and control pests. The benefits of these less intense practices have become greater and greater over the last three decades, a finding possible only because of the long-term nature of the studies. The long-term perspective at KBS LTER has led to unique discoveries in the areas of biodiversity, climate change, and socioecology.

Biodiversity: Landscape diversity enhances pest suppression. Simplification of agricultural landscapes reduces abundance of predatory insects, which comes at a substantial cost to farmers and society. To study landscape diversity, we have introduced native plant species via “prairie strips” within row crops, testing the hypothesis that higher diversity will enhance resilience of ecological systems in managed lands. Research from KBS LTER found that diverse landscapes serve as habitat for pollinators, such as butterflies. Given global declines in insect abundance, it is important to increase the diversity of habitats and their spatial arrangement across landscapes in order to enhance biodiversity and provide pollination services worth hundreds of millions of dollars per year.

Climate change: To study the future of agriculture under climate change, KBS LTER introduced a new experiment that increased rainfall variability and drought, two conditions predicted in many regions in the coming decades. The drought manipulation occurred on KBS LTER’s hallmark long-term experiment that documents ecological and evolutionary responses to a gradient of land use intensity from intensive agriculture to conservation lands. Using this study as a foundation, we test how mechanisms of drought resilience change across land use intensities across whole ecological systems.

Agriculture emits quantities of greenhouse gasses equivalent to those from the transportation sector. KBS LTER research found that plant-microbe-soil interactions can increase soil’s ability to sequester carbon, reduce nitrous oxide emissions, and promote methane oxidation. When implemented widely, improved management could make cropping systems a major tool in the fight against climate change. Partnering with agricultural and industry professionals, KBS LTER has informed greenhouse gas policies at the national level. One example is through a carbon-credit protocol for agricultural nitrogen management to allow farmers to participate in voluntary carbon credit markets. This protocol, the first for nitrogen, compensates farmers for precise application of nitrogen fertilizer in order to reduce nitrous oxide emissions. 

Socioecology: Research at KBS LTER reveals how farmers perceive and provide ecosystem services. Ongoing research with farmers explores how changing perceptions affect their decisions regarding crop and environmental management. New findings include that conservation cropping practices can improve ecosystem services. KBS LTER has identified the economic value of those services. Paired studies of farmers and consumers track farmer willingness to provide changed practices, along with consumer willingness to pay for ecosystem services that come from those changed practices, such as climate mitigation, water quality regulation, and natural pest control.

To reach the next generation of farmers, scientists, and public decision makers, KBS LTER has developed strong and long-lasting relationships with educators throughout the state and across the world. For almost 30 years, the KBS LTER K-12 Partnership has engaged hundreds of classroom teachers and informal science educators via in-depth professional development workshops, web-based resources, and providing scholarships to bring their students to visit KBS LTER. From this partnership, scientists and teachers worked together to co-design Data Nuggets, which are data literacy activities featuring authentic research and data from scientists. These activities are used in tens of thousands of classrooms worldwide, and help share research findings from the KBS LTER broadly.

Last Modified: 03/25/2024
Modified by: Nicholas M Haddad