Yield stability analysis reveals sources of large-scale nitrogen loss from the US Midwest

Basso, Bruno; Shuai, Guanyuan; Zhang, Jinshui; Robertson, G. Philip

doi:10.1038/s41598-019-42271-1

Cited by 89 publications

(62 citation statements)

References 45 publications

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“…Other activities, like minimizing food waste 74 , 75 , reducing animal-based diets 4 , 76 , and closing yield gaps 77 , 78 will need to play more prominent roles in meeting future agricultural demand while maintaining ecological integrity. Likewise, practices that improve efficiency 79 , 80 and reduce the impacts of current cropland management—such as the use of cover crops 81 , 82 vegetation strips 83 , 84 , diversification of crop rotations 85 , and restorative agriculture 86 – 88 increase in importance in a world that is more reliant on the existing extent of cropland area. Whereas further cropland expansion is likely to exacerbate the agronomic risks, yield deficits, and wildlife impacts of increased production, the alternative of slowing or halting this ongoing land conversion offers a vital opportunity to help address the growing challenges facing agricultural production systems.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cropland expansion in the United States produces marginal yields at high costs to wildlife

et al. 2020

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Recent expansion of croplands in the United States has caused widespread conversion of grasslands and other ecosystems with largely unknown consequences for agricultural production and the environment. Here we assess annual land use change 2008–16 and its impacts on crop yields and wildlife habitat. We find that croplands have expanded at a rate of over one million acres per year, and that 69.5% of new cropland areas produced yields below the national average, with a mean yield deficit of 6.5%. Observed conversion infringed upon high-quality habitat that, relative to unconverted land, had provided over three times higher milkweed stem densities in the Monarch butterfly Midwest summer breeding range and 37% more nesting opportunities per acre for waterfowl in the Prairie Pothole Region of the Northern Great Plains. Our findings demonstrate a pervasive pattern of encroachment into areas that are increasingly marginal for production, but highly significant for wildlife, and suggest that such tradeoffs may be further amplified by future cropland expansion.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cropland expansion in the United States produces marginal yields at high costs to wildlife

et al. 2020

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“…Agricultural landscape configuration will continue to change with shifting economic conditions, technologies, and values. For example, farmers increasingly have spatially-explicit yield data that reveals marginal subsets of farm fields (i.e., sections that are consistently not profitable) [54], meaning that it may become practical to convert unproductive portions to seminatural habitat to avoid profit loss, enhance hunting or conservation value, or for bioenergy crops. This would result in both more seminatural habitat and reduced grain size.…”

Section: Figure 2 Viewing Pest Suppression Through the Lens Of Multimentioning

confidence: 99%

Predicting Landscape Configuration Effects on Agricultural Pest Suppression

Haan

Zhang

Landis

2020

Trends in Ecology & Evolution

168

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Arthropod predators and parasitoids attack crop pests, providing a valuable ecosystem service. The amount of noncrop habitat surrounding crop fields influences pest suppression, but synthesis of new studies suggests that the spatial configuration of crops and other habitats is similarly important. Natural enemies are often more abundant in fine-grained agricultural landscapes comprising smaller patches and can increase or decrease with the connectivity of crop fields to other habitats. Partitioning organisms by traits has emerged as a promising way to predict the strength and direction of these effects. Furthermore, our ability to predict configurational effects will depend on understanding the potential for indirect effects among trophic levels and the relationship between arthropod dispersal capability and the spatial scale of underlying landscape structure. Landscape Structure Influences Pest Suppression in Crop FieldsIn agricultural landscapes, predatory and parasitic arthropods suppress herbivorous arthropod populations, providing an essential ecosystem service valued at billions of dollars annually [1]. In recent decades researchers have begun to identify factors driving the abundance of natural enemies (see Glossary), pests, and the effectiveness of pest suppression in crop fields, with the aim of designing and managing agricultural landscapes to maximize this and other services [2][3][4][5]. Positive outcomes from enhanced pest suppression could include greater crop yields, reduced pesticide use, and increased arthropod diversity in agricultural landscapes. Arthropod communities in crop fields are influenced by the landscape that surrounds them: on their own, crop fields are unsuitable for some beneficial insects because they are usually monocultures and undergo frequent disturbance. This means that other nearby habitats may be especially important for determining which arthropods colonize farm fields. Most research on how landscape structure influences pest suppression has focused on effects of landscape composition (i.e., amounts of habitat). In general, seminatural habitats can provide natural enemies with resources including food, overwintering habitat, nest sites, and refuge from agricultural disturbance, allowing them to survive and then colonize crop fields to exploit the herbivores that accumulate there [3]. Pest suppression is generally thought to increase when crop fields are surrounded by more noncrop or seminatural habitat. However, while this occurs in some circumstances, the effects of landscape composition on pest suppression overall are inconsistent, varying among systems and organisms [4].Beyond composition, there is also variation in landscape configuration [6]. Multiple lines of reasoning suggest that configurational aspects of landscape structure should affect pest suppression. First, since there is spillover of beneficial organisms along interfaces between habitat patches [7], configurational variables such as patch size, shape, amount of shared edge, and connectivity should influence...

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“…For example, in a yield stability study of Midwest US nitrogen utilization by Basso et. al., 48 estimated average nitrogen losses were 24% and 43% for areas with stable high yields and stable low yields, respectively. These environmental and resource challenges become even more daunting with climate change, which is expected to adversely impact the abiotic and biotic systems ubiquitous to production agriculture.…”

Section: Resources and Environmental Challengesmentioning

confidence: 99%