Objective 3:
Soil Health and Nutrient Management
Overview
We compare soil health improvement and nutrient retention between perennial ground cover (PGC) and conventional cover crop systems and generate data to help frame expectations about PGC environmental and economic outcomes.
Goals
Research Goals
- Quantify the changes in physical, chemical, and biological indicators of soil health achieved by PGC, which relate to water movement, soil fertility, and carbon storage, by monitoring soil health status in PGC and conventional systems.
- Quantify the benefits of PGC to improve nutrient cycling, retention, and plant availability by
- Measuring nutrient leaching/retention potential.
- Measuring nutrient loss via greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
Outreach & Education Goals
- We are helping to build a geographically and culturally diverse PGC community science network of farmers, CAP researchers, and 4-H ‘ers who leverage a mobile app/web platform (previously co-developed by The Land Institute and citsci.org) to collect and analyze soil health data collaboratively.
SoIl health and nutrient Management Team
Leadership
Morgan P. Davis
University of Missouri
Marshall D. McDaniel
Iowa State University
CollaboratorS
Jamshid Ansari
University of Missouri – Columbia
Daniel Andersen
Iowa State University
Richard Roth
Iowa State University
Graduate Students
Alioune Diop
Iowa State University
Maxwell Eness
Iowa State University
Modestos Modestou
Iowa State University
Philip Ekow Rockson
Iowa State University
Malcolm St Cyr
Iowa State University
Alumni
Gabrielle Myers-Bailey
Iowa State University
Ph.D Graduate, May 2024