What will climate change look like on Pacific Northwest rangelands, which cover a huge area of our region? It will undoubtedly have complex impacts on the physical environment, environmental stressors, socio-economic factors…
Topsoil has often been referred to as the “thin skin” of our planet, essential for producing the food that feeds us. Because it’s not easy to create new topsoil, conserving the soil that we have is essential…
Wheat residue on field near Ritzville, Washington, which is part of the a grain-fallow cropping system. (Photo: D. Kilgore) In non-irrigated areas that are too dry to support annual cropping, fallow (the practice of leaving…
Farmer and long-time CSANR advisory committee member, Dale Gies. Photo: S. Kantor. What are the climate impacts of a given farm practice? While we know lots of strategies for reducing greenhouse gas emissions on farms,…
Biochar as a soil amendment has been the subject of much attention in recent years because of its ability to sequester carbon and to improve aggregation, water holding capacity, and organic matter content of soil…
Building on our long-term efforts relating to dairy nutrient management, we now have a new publication that summarizes the various approaches being explored for nutrient recovery on dairies – and what we know about the current costs and performance that are associated with each strategy. The publication, Approaches to Nutrient Recovery from Dairy Manure, was […]
Karen Hills and CSANR Associate Director, Georgine Yorgey co-wrote this post. Dryland areas are historically used for wheat production. Photo: USDA, ARS. Across the dryland areas of the inland Pacific Northwest, soil erosion and the…
The production of crop residue varies dramatically across the Inland Pacific Northwest, with estimated residue production for winter wheat ranging from roughly 0.9 ton/acre in the drier grain-fallow cropping system (Figure 1) to 8.5 ton/acre…
Models suggest that climate change in our region will involve an annual temperature increase of 3-4°F by the 2050’s, accompanied by changes in precipitation patterns, including drier summers despite a 5-15% increase in annual precipitation (Kruger et al. 2017). Even with this information, uncertainty still exists about what climate change will mean for agriculture, in […]
Though severe erosion can quickly deplete topsoil, rebuilding topsoil is an extremely difficult and slow process, so conserving this resource is imperative. Soil erosion is one of the biggest challenges in agricultural production in the…