{"id":304,"date":"2013-11-19T02:00:29","date_gmt":"2013-11-19T07:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.esa.org\/fieldtalk\/?p=304"},"modified":"2014-01-02T20:53:47","modified_gmt":"2014-01-03T01:53:47","slug":"making-room-for-prairie-strips-lisa-schulte-moore-land-sharingsparing-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.esa.org\/fieldtalk\/making-room-for-prairie-strips-lisa-schulte-moore-land-sharingsparing-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Making room for prairie STRIPs: Lisa Schulte Moore (Land Sharing\/Sparing #1)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Field<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cI got kind of sick of working on environmental problems, and I wanted to work on environmental solutions. From that standpoint, agriculture \u2014 it\u2019s like the world is your oyster. There\u2019s so much that could be done.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Lisa Schulte Moore, an professor of natural resource ecology and management at Iowa State University, seems to have the energy of three people. She has a hand in agricultural landscape management, bioenergy development, oak restoration, and hemlock and pine forest management, among other projects, and still makes time to drive all over Iowa, talking to farmers. In this episode of Field Talk, she explains how integrating STRIPs of prairie into conventional row crops improves water quality\u00a0\u2014 and helps farms, waterways, and wildlife.<\/p>\n

This is the first in a series of conversations springing from ideas and arguments about “land-sparing” and “land-sharing” strategies to conserve a rich tapestry of species in our human dominated world. Should we intensively farm some lands in order to preserve wildness in reserves? Accept a more flexible, less “pure,” idea of wildness, embracing conservation easements threaded into more diversified agricultural landscapes? Is this dichotomy a useful concept at all?<\/p>\n

\"Soil<\/a>

Soil erosion\u2026.or not.<\/strong> Even small amounts of perennials can have a dramatic impact on the environmental benefits provided by row-cropped agricultural lands. This image depicts the ability of native prairie to keep soil in farm fields, where it can produce crops, as opposed to allowing it to move into streams, where it becomes a serious pollutant. The STRIPS Project has shown that farm fields with just 10% of their area converted to native prairie produce diverse environmental benefits in amounts greatly disproportionate to their extent compared to fields entirely in row-crop production. This image was taken after a 4 inch rain. Caption, Lisa Schulte Moore. Photo, Dave Williams.<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

Show notes:<\/h4>\n