The LTAR Cropland Common Experiment at the Kellogg Biological Station.

The Kellogg Biological Station Long-term Agroecosystem Research site (KBS LTAR) joined the national LTAR network in 2015 to represent a northeast portion of the North Central Region, extending across 76,000 km of southern Michigan and northern Indiana. Regional cropping systems are dominated by corn (Zea mays)-soybean (Glycine max) rotations managed with conventional tillage, industry-average rates of fertilizer and pesticide inputs uniformly applied, few cover crops, and little animal integration. In 2020, KBS LTAR initiated the Aspirational Cropping System Experiment as part of the LTAR Common Experiment, a co-production model wherein stakeholders and researchers collaborate to advance transformative change in agriculture.

Mapping cover crop species in southeastern Michigan using Sentinel-2 satellite data and Google Earth Engine.

Cover crops are a critical agricultural practice that can improve soil quality, enhance crop yields, and reduce nitrogen and phosphorus losses from farms. Yet there is limited understanding of the extent to which cover crops have been adopted across large spatial and temporal scales. Remote sensing offers a low-cost way to monitor cover crop adoption at the field scale and at large spatio-temporal scales.

Feedbacks between nitrogen fixation and soil organic matter increase ecosystem functions in diversified agroecosystems.

Nitrogen (N) losses from intensified agriculture are a major cause of global change, due to nitrate (NO ) export and the eutrophication of aquatic systems as well as emissions of nitrous oxide (N O) into the atmosphere. Diversified agroecosystems with legume cover crops couple N and carbon (C) inputs to soil and reduce N pollution, but there is a need to identify controls on legume N fixation across ecosystems with variable soil conditions. Here, I tested the hypothesis that N mineralization from turnover of soil organic matter (SOM) regulates legume N fixation across 10 farms that spanned a gradient of SOM levels.

Exploring the role of ectomycorrhizal fungi in soil carbon dynamics.

The extent to which ectomycorrhizal (ECM) fungi enable plants to access organic nitrogen (N) bound in soil organic matter (SOM) and transfer this growth-limiting nutrient to their plant host, has important implications for our understanding of plant-fungal interactions, and the cycling and storage of carbon (C) and N in terrestrial ecosystems. Empirical evidence currently supports a range of perspectives, suggesting that ECM vary in their ability to provide their host with N bound in SOM, and that this capacity can both positively and negatively influence soil C storage. To help resolve the multiplicity of observations, we gathered a group of researchers to explore the role of ECM fungi in soil C dynamics, and propose new directions that hold promise to resolve competing hypotheses and contrasting observations.

Peri-Urban, but Not Urban, Residence in Bolivia Is Associated with Higher Odds of Co-Occurrence of Overweight and Anemia among Young Children, and of Households with an Overweight Woman and Stunted Child.

Background: Urban populations have grown globally alongside emerging simultaneous burdens of undernutrition and obesity. Yet, how heterogeneous urban environments are associated with this nutritional double burden is poorly understood.

Objective: We aimed to determine: 1) the prevalence of the nutritional double burden and its components in urban, peri-urban, and rural areas of Bolivia; and 2) the association of residence in these areas with the nutritional double burden and its components.

Crop rotations for increased soil carbon: perenniality as a guiding principle.

More diverse crop rotations have been promoted for their potential to remediate the range of ecosystem services compromised by biologically simplified grain-based agroecosystems, including increasing soil organic carbon (SOC). We hypothesized that functional diversity offers a more predictive means of characterizing the impact of crop rotations on SOC concentrations than species diversity per se. Furthermore, we hypothesized that functional diversity can either increase or decrease SOC depending on its associated carbon (C) input to soil.

A social-ecological perspective on harmonizing food security and biodiversity conservation.

The major challenges of improving food security and biodiversity conservation are intricately linked. To date, the intersection of food security and biodiversity conservation has been viewed primarily through an agricultural "production lens"-for example, via the land sparing/sharing framework, or the concept of sustainable intensification. However, a productionist perspective has been criticized for being too narrow, and failing to consider other relevant factors, including policy, equity, and diversity.

A Systematic Review of the Measurement of Sustainable Diets.

Sustainability has become an integral consideration of the dietary guidelines of many countries in recent decades. However, a lack of clear metrics and a shared approach to measuring the multiple components of sustainable diets has hindered progress toward generating the evidence needed to ensure the credibility of new guidelines. We performed a systematic literature review of empirical research studies on sustainable diets to identify the components of sustainability that were measured and the methods applied to do so.

The impact of nitrogen source and crop rotation on nitrogen mass balances in the Mississippi River Basin.

Nitrogen (N) leaching to surface waters from grain farms in the Mississippi River Basin (MRB), USA, is the primary cause of hypoxia in the Gulf of Mexico. Regional-scale N mass balances indicate that a small, intensively cropped area of the upper MRB contributes disproportionately to nitrate loading. These aggregate balances miss small-scale variability, especially that caused by differences in farm management.