Integration of Prairie Strips Into Agricultural Landscapes to Enhance Ecosystem Services: An Iowa Example.

Overcoming the food, energy, environment “trilemma” poses a major societal challenge at present. Strategically integrating strips of native prairie within row-cropped agroecosystems  has the potential to provide feasible answers to the trilemma.  Twelve zero-order watersheds in Iowa have been monitored since 2007 to evaluate the range of ecosystem services that can be provided by integrating prairie strips into an annual row crop system.  Four treatments have been investigated which include: 100% rowcrop, 10% prairie at the footslope position of the watershed, and 10% or 20% in prairie in contour strips moving up from the footslope position. From 2007 to 2012 the impact of the prairie strips on soil loss, nutrient loss, surface water runoff, bird diversity, plant diversity, insect diversity, and economics have been evaluated.  Evaluation has also included crop yield and biomass production of the prairie strip areas. Results of the experiment show prairie strips slow and purify water and provide habitat for biodiversity without negatively affecting adjacent row-crop production.  The strips could also be a potential biomass source for bioenergy production.