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A positive role for biodiversity is assumed for managed ecosystems. We conducted a 12-year study of this sustainability principle, through separate manipulation of management intensity and crop diversity. The site was located in southwest Michigan, representative of rain-fed production, with high climate variability and well-drained soils. Provisioning services of grain and protein yield were monitored, simultaneous with supporting services of soil fertility, C and N, and regulating services associated with water quality (N-use efficiency and nitrate-N leached in gravimetric lysimeters). Surprisingly, a strong role for management was shown, and almost nil for crop diversity. Organic management (ORG) sustained soil...
While agricultural landscape change over the course of 20th century has generally resulted in substantial gains in productivity, there is growing concern that the spatially uniform, functionally homogenized agricultural landscapes lack both environmental resilience and socioeconomic sustainability. The State of Iowa, USA provides a specific example where agriculture is highly developed and functions in a highly modified, human-dominated landscape; yet, few spatially explicit, comprehensive, and consistent data are available from which to assess change. To begin filling this gap, we digitized land cover information from aerial photographs for three Iowa townships (Orient Township in Adair County, Bloomfield Township...
Few agricultural producers utilize the true analytical power of GIS and computer simulation models, partly because the loose linkages developed to-date between GIS and most public-domain modeling software are extremely cumbersome to use. The integrated system (EPIC–View) developed in the study allows the integration of a comprehensive hydrologic–crop management model (EPIC) with a desktop GIS to function as a planning tool aimed at implementing sustainable farm management practices. The use of GIS makes possible the integration of diverse spatial data into a comprehensive spatial database. EPIC–View is applied to simulate nitrogen (N) dynamics under conventional and minimum tillage conditions of a field located...
Predicting impacts of climate change or alternative management on both food production and environment safety in agroecosystems is drawing great attention in the scientific community. Most of the existing agroecosystem models emphasize either crop growth or soil processes. This paper reports the latest development of an agroecosystem model (Crop-DNDC) by integrating detailed crop growth algorithms with an existing soil biogeochemical model, DNDC (Li et al., J. Geophys. Res. (1992) 9759). In the Crop-DNDC model, crop growth is simulated not only by tracking crop physiological processes (phenology, leaf area index, photosynthesis, respiration, assimilate allocation, rooting processes and nitrogen uptake), but also...