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The Use Of Biological Soil Health Indicators To Quantify The Benefits Of Cover Crops, Alexander Wu
The Use Of Biological Soil Health Indicators To Quantify The Benefits Of Cover Crops, Alexander Wu
Masters Theses
Soils provide many essential functions that support the world. With a decline in soil health, these functions also decrease in efficiency, and can threaten the health of billions of people around the world. Typically, soil health tests do not use biological indicators, however microbes drive and perform vital functions to increase soil health. One way to increase soil health is through the use of cover crops to reduce soil erosion during fallow periods, increasing soil organic matter, as well as collecting nutrients from soil into their biomass. These cover crops are then terminated through various methods such as herbicides, disk …
Developing Alternative Forage Production Strategies For Enhanced Environmental And Economic Resilience On New England Dairy Farms, Samantha Glaze-Corcoran
Developing Alternative Forage Production Strategies For Enhanced Environmental And Economic Resilience On New England Dairy Farms, Samantha Glaze-Corcoran
Doctoral Dissertations
Cover crops are prized for their array of well documented and widely respected ecosystem services. Cover crops are an intrinsic part of building and sustaining soil health and thus the long term productive capacity of agricultural soils. However, effective cover crop adoption on New England dairy farms is lacking, and the benefits of traditional cover crops may be somewhat mismatched to the needs of dairy farms. Harvesting winter hardy small cereal grains for forage can provide practical incentive to farmers to incorporate effective cover crop management as well as provide an economic benefit in the form of additional on-farm forage …
Integrating Cover Crop Mixtures And No-Till For Sustainable Sweet Corn Production In The Northeast, Julie S. Fine
Integrating Cover Crop Mixtures And No-Till For Sustainable Sweet Corn Production In The Northeast, Julie S. Fine
Masters Theses
Fall-planted forage radish (Raphanus sativus L. longipinnatus) cover crops have shown successful weed suppression and recycling of fall-captured nutrients. This research evaluated the nutrient cycling and weed suppressive benefits of forage radish cover crop mixtures to develop an integrated system for no-till sweet corn (Zea mays L. var rugosa) production that improves crop yield and soil health. Treatments included forage radish (FR), oats (Avena sativa L.) and forage radish (OFR), a mixture of peas (Pisum sativum subsp arvense L.), oats and forage radish (POFR), and no cover crop control (NCC). Subplots were assigned to …