Makayla Ward
Pronouns: She/Her
Research Mentor(s): Jennifer Blesh
Co-Presenter:
Research Mentor School/College/Department: School for Environment and Sustainability / SNRE
Presentation Date: April 20
Presentation Type: Poster
Session: Session 5 – 3:40pm – 4:30 pm
Room: League Ballroom
Authors: Makayla Ward, Etienne Herrick, Jennifer Blesh
Presenter: 34
Abstract
Industrial agriculture contributes to numerous environmental problems, including greenhouse gas emissions and nutrient pollution of waterways. Cover crops, which are non-harvested crops grown in periods between main crops, can provide ecosystem services (e.g., weed and pest control, nutrient cycling, erosion control) that reduce the environmental impact of agriculture. However, cover crop performance is influenced by many factors, and can therefore be highly variable across farms. To understand how to improve cover crop performance and management, we conducted: 1) an observational, citizen science study across the Great Lakes region, and 2) a cover crop experiment on seven farms in Tuscola County, Michigan with different soil conditions. The citizen science study involved developing a field assessment protocol for farmers to estimate cover crop growth on their farms, and creating a survey that asks each farmer about environmental and management factors for fields included in the study. In the 2021 pilot study, we found that cover crop growth ranged from 506 kg ha-1 to 8983 kg ha-1 across farms in southern MI. We are now expanding the study to include farms across the entire Great Lakes region, which will allow us to produce context-specific recommendations for improving cover crop management. In the on-farm experiment, we measured cover crop functional traits that serve as indicators of how the plants are interacting with and affecting their environment, including leaf nitrogen concentration, maximum plant height, and specific leaf area. We found that all three cover crop traits varied in response to soil conditions across farms. These preliminary results demonstrate that improving understanding of drivers of cover crop performance is a critical research need, and suggest that soil conditions may be important predictors of cover crop outcomes.
Environmental Studies, Interdisciplinary
