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Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics

Seasonal Soil Carbon Fluxes In Transitioning Agricultural Soils In Central Washington State: Relations To Land-Use, Environmental Factors And Soil Carbon-Nitrogen Characteristics, Brandon Kautzman Jan 2019

Seasonal Soil Carbon Fluxes In Transitioning Agricultural Soils In Central Washington State: Relations To Land-Use, Environmental Factors And Soil Carbon-Nitrogen Characteristics, Brandon Kautzman

All Master's Theses

Changing agricultural land-use practices to increase soil carbon sequestration contributes to climate change mitigation and improved food security by moving CO2 from the atmosphere into soil as soil organic carbon (SOC). In 2016, a farm in Thorp, Washington, Spoon Full Farm, began converting land historically farmed using conventional methods of tillage and synthetic fertilizers to conservation farming methods with direct seeding and organic soil amendments with a goal of sequestering carbon in the soil. This project evaluates relationships of soil CO2 respiration and net ecological exchange (NEE) with land-use types, seasonal environmental factors (air temperature, relative humidity, soil …


Conservation Agriculture In The Heartland: Farmer Perceptions Of Soil Health And The Adoption Of Cover Crops, Lillian Clarissa Cobo Jan 2019

Conservation Agriculture In The Heartland: Farmer Perceptions Of Soil Health And The Adoption Of Cover Crops, Lillian Clarissa Cobo

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

The benefits of cover crops are widely recognized by those interested in conservation agriculture and soil health. These benefits include soil erosion control, nutrient loss reduction, and overall improvement of soil health. However, while these benefits are well-documented, the adoption rate of cover crops in the American Heartland remains astoundingly low. While some studies have attempted to determine the reasons for this low adoption rate, the information relating to how farmer perceptions of soil health impact cover crop adoption is almost nonexistent. Furthermore, there is a clear absence of mixed method studies in the literature relating to this subject. This …