Author Archives: Luke Struckman

Soil health is a phrase that describes the physical, chemical, and biological functions of soils in the context of production agriculture. Certain agricultural practices (like no-till, cover cropping, and managed stock grazing) have been scientifically proven to improve the function of agricultural soils. Over the past two decades or so, the concept of “soil health”Continue reading “Soil Health Monitoring”

Agronomic research is important for improving the profitability and sustainability of field crop production. Production improvements are also driven by field crop producers through on-farm innovation. Using observation and on-farm trials, producers do the work of translating scientific findings into profitable and practical production practices at the field and farm scale. In North America, fieldContinue reading “Documenting Producer-Driven Innovation in Field Crop Production”

Grasslands of the Canadian Prairie provinces and U.S. Plains states have a history of management by Indigenous peoples. One of primary management tools used by Indigenous peoples is cultural burning. Cultural burning can promote the growth of economically useful plant species, improve fodder for game species, and reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfires (Roos etContinue reading “Prescribed burning resources for agricultural landowners and land managers”

PC-based Geographic Information System (GIS) software is the most robust tool available for compiling, analyzing, and representing geospatial data. The leading commercial GIS package, ArcGIS, enjoys broad use and specialized extensions. Similarly, QGIS is one of the most widely used open-source GIS packages and has many similar capabilities as ArcGIS. ArcGIS only runs on WindowsContinue reading “Web-based Mapping Platforms”

Over the past 200 years, large tracts of diverse biomes such as North American grasslands, the northern Kazakh steppe, the Brazilian cerrado, or Ontario’s Carolinian forest zone have been converted to commodity-based agricultural production (Comer et al. 2018; Petrick, Wandel,and Karsten 2013; Oliveira and Hecht 2016; Bowley 2016). The process of clearing more “natural” formsContinue reading “Land cover and carbon sequestration in agricultural landscapes”

The concepts of land use and land cover are increasingly relevant to agricultural landscape management. Land use refers to how land is utilized based on economic and policy decisions. Land cover refers to vegetation characteristics (USDA ERS 2022) Precision agriculture and the quantification of ecosystems services require that agricultural landscapes be classified into different landContinue reading “Why are the concepts of land use and land cover relevant to agricultural landscape management?”

Soil Organic Carbon (SOC) is the primary means of directly measuring carbon sequestration in agricultural soils. SOC is a measurable component of Soil Organic Matter (SOM), which is a commonly measured soil property. SOC can be measured in most scientific and commercial soil labs and is considered a standard soil test. Although SOC measurements inContinue reading “In the direct measurement of carbon sequestration in agricultural landscapes, geospatial methodologies are being overlooked”

It is argued that worldwide efforts to shift agricultural land management to practices which sequester excess atmospheric carbon may only provide a small percentage of the sequestration capacity that is required to mitigate climate change. (Schlesinger, 2022). Although the carbon sequestration capacity of agricultural soils may be marginal, the co-benefits provided by managing agricultural soilsContinue reading “Why is it difficult and costly to directly measure soil carbon in agricultural landscapes?”

Since 1995 the IPCC has promoted carbon sequestration in agricultural soils as a one of many climate change mitigation strategies (IPCC, 1995). In principle, certain “improved” practices such as no-till, cover cropping, and increased crop diversity can result in the long-term storage of excess atmospheric carbon in the soil profile. The adoption of such practicesContinue reading “Is the carbon sequestration capacity of agricultural soils being overstated?”

Carbon sequestration in agricultural landscapes is promoted as a key climate change mitigation pathway. The IPCC has long promoted carbon sequestration in agricultural landscapes and more recently governments and private companies have promoted commercialized carbon offsetting for agricultural landscapes. However, methodologies for estimating Soil Organic Carbon (SOC) are poorly developed at the field and landscapeContinue reading “Measuring and Modelling Carbon Sequestration in Agricultural Landscapes”