AMES, Iowa — Climate change and agriculture is the focus of the latest Journal of Soil and Water Conservation with most of the papers in the issue authored all or in-part by researchers and graduate students participating in the USDA-funded Climate and Corn-based Cropping Systems Coordinated Agricultural Project, commonly known as the Sustainable Corn Project, led by Iowa State University.
The papers in the journal represent research that is underway at Iowa State and other land-grant universities to better understand how the distribution and timing of precipitation and temperature, farm management practices, human perceptions of risk and human responses to risk affect crops, surface water and soil. Of the 20 papers in the journal, 14 were written by those affiliated with the Sustainable Corn Project.
“The Soil and Water Conservation Society recognizes the urgency and value of the Sustainable Corn Project,” said Jim Gulliford, director of the Soil and Water Conservation Society. “The research, education and extension outreach of the project links environmental, social and economic impacts of variable long-term weather patterns to agricultural and ecological sustainability.”
The project is led by Iowa State and made up of 160 scientists, technical specialists and staff, extension educators, graduate students and post-doctoral researchers at 10 land-grant universities and an agricultural research station in the Corn Belt. Nineteen of the project’s principle investigators are Iowa State faculty and scientists.
“Our work is about understanding systems, specifically the carbon, nitrogen, water and human-social systems that underpin the management of corn and soybean production,” said Lois Wright Morton, professor of sociology at Iowa State and director of the Sustainable Corn Project.
The November/December issue of the journal is available online at www.jswconline.org. For more information about the Sustainable Corn Project, see www.sustainablecorn.org.