Tallgrass Prairie Publications and Reports
Document Type
Report
Keywords
Prairie restoration--Iowa; Plants for soil conservation--Planting--Iowa; Plants for soil conservation--Seeds--Iowa;
First Page
1
Last Page
20
Abstract
In order to reduce nutrient loss and increase other ecological benefits, there is growing interest in integrating reconstructed tallgrass prairie stands within and around crop fields. The most recent Farm Bill creates a new conservation practice (CP-43, Prairie Strips) to encourage prairie vegetation in and around farmed fields for the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP). Because this practice is flexible and easy to integrate into conventionally farmed fields, Prairie Strips have proven very popular, and nearly 15,000 acres have been enrolled in less than 2 years (Farm Service Agency 2021).
To optimize the potential value of this popular nutrient reduction practice, we need to ensure they maximize multifunctionality (i.e., they simultaneously provide multiple ecological benefits) in a cost-effective way. Multi-functional, high quality prairie habitat consists of grassland with high abundance of forbs, but attempts to restore diverse stands of mixed grasses and forbs often result in poor establishment or poor long-term persistence of forb species. Several authors have shown that the overabundance of grasses in the establishing stands of native grassland vegetation can lead to poor forb establishment or loss of forb abundance and diversity over time (Dickson and Busby 2009; Grman et al. 2021). These and similar studies such as Meissen et al. (2020) and Peters and Schottler (2010) show that seed mix design, especially the use of balanced grass to forb seeding rates (by seed density), plays a leading role in increasing forb establishment and limiting grass dominance.
Department
Tallgrass Prairie Center
Original Publication Date
2-10-2022
Repository
UNI ScholarWorks, Rod Library, University of Northern Iowa
Copyright
©2022 Justin Meissen
Language
en
File Format
application/pdf
Recommended Citation
Meissen, Justin, "Optimizing graminoid composition in cost-effective seed mixes for prairie strips" (2022). Tallgrass Prairie Publications and Reports. 28.
https://scholarworks.uni.edu/tpc_facpub/28
