Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

Availability

Open Access Thesis

Abstract

The Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) is an extensive government program established by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) in 1985 where farmers across the country agree to take land out of agricultural production and plant species to improve environmental health and quality in exchange for yearly rental payments. The main goals of CRP include re-establishing valuable land cover to improve water quality, preventing soil erosion, and reducing the loss of wildlife habitat. Currently, there are approximately 22 million acres enrolled across the country. The CRP is portrayed as a powerful tool that can be used to mitigate the impacts of climate change. Though CRP can be used to combat climate change, it is still impacted by climate change in many ways including the increased prevalence of long, intense droughts. When these periods of drought occur, landowners are given the opportunity to perform emergency management (haying or grazing) on their CRP fields to provide feed to cattle. This study looked for correlations between county management percentage and drought length, drought intensity, and head of cattle to predict when farmers would perform emergency management. Results found very little emergency management occurring with no correlation between management percentage and any independent variables. Additionally, this study analyzed the effects of emergency management on vegetation cover, forb-to-grass ratio, and bare ground cover. Results showed an overall decline in vegetation cover and an increase in bare ground cover due to emergency management. Effects of emergency management on forb-to-grass ratio were shown to vary largely based on region with a clear divide between more mesic and more arid regions. Overall conclusions suggest it is difficult to predict when emergency management is going to occur and low utilization suggests that it is not necessary to cattle nutrition during drought. Instead, emergency management could be used to improve the environmental quality of CRP fields by creating regionally-adapted policies.

Year of Submission

2025

Degree Name

Master of Science

Department

Department of Biology

First Advisor

Kenneth Elgersma

Date Original

2025

Object Description

1 PDF file (xi, 77 pages)

Language

en

File Format

application/pdf

Download

Comments?

Share

COinS