Tallgrass Prairie Publications and Reports
Document Type
Report
Keywords
Prairie plants--Planting--Iowa; Prairie plants--Seeds--Iowa; Prairie restoration--Economic aspects--Iowa;
First Page
1
Last Page
33
Abstract
Restoring ecosystem services at scale requires executing conservation programs in a way that is resource and cost efficient as well as ecologically effective. Rather than pursuing programs that maximize single ecosystem services, conservation programs may achieve greater impact with limited resources (i.e. be more cost-effective) by working to balance multiple ecological benefits. A robust literature shows how diverse ecosystems in general can provide a wide variety of benefits simultaneously (e.g. Macfadyen et al. 2012; Wratten et al. 2012), and how ecological restoration can be largely self-sustaining (Miller et al. 2016). In the midwestern United States specifically, species rich tallgrass prairies provide a wide array of ecosystem services when restored on the landscape (Schulte et al. 2017). By strategically restoring prairie on 10% of farm fields, nitrogen and phosphorus losses to surface runoff can be reduced 73-82% (Zhou et al. 2014). Further, integrating prairie into farm fields and other parts of the rural landscape can practically eliminate sediment runoff (Helmers et al. 2012) and increase pollinator abundance (Ries et al. 2001). While the multiple benefits of tallgrass prairie are well known, no studies have investigated how to maximize ecological benefits of prairie reconstruction while minimizing cost.
Department
Tallgrass Prairie Center
Original Publication Date
7-31-2018
Repository
UNI ScholarWorks, Rod Library, University of Northern Iowa
Copyright
©2018 Justin Meissen
Language
en
File Format
application/pdf
Recommended Citation
Meissen, Justin, "Cost-effective seed mix design and first-year management" (2018). Tallgrass Prairie Publications and Reports. 21.
https://scholarworks.uni.edu/tpc_facpub/21
