Treesearch
Agroecosystem restoration through strategic integration of perennials
| Authors: | Lisa A. Schulte, Matt Liebman, Heidi Asbjornsen, Tom Crow |
| Year: | 2006 |
| Type: | Scientific Journal |
| Station: | Northern Research Station |
| DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1080/00224561.2006.12435902 |
| Source: | Journal of Soil and Water Conservation |
Download (PDF 501 KB): https://research.fs.usda.gov/download/treesearch/81408.pdf
Abstract
A dominant trend in arable farming systems worldwide is the replacement of large areas of perennial vegetation with a small number of annual crops (Green et al., 2005). Some of this change occurs as native vegetation is replaced by annual crops, but change in the latter half of the 20th Century has also occurred through the simplification of diverse systems that formerly included perennial forages and annual crops (Bullock, 1992). Extreme examples of these processes can be seen over the last century in the U.S. Midwest, where prairies, savannas, forests, and wetlands have been almost completely replaced by corn and soybean (Figure 1).