Human and environmental factors are changing agriculture worldwide. How can farms provide food, fiber and fuel for growing populations, and conserve vital physical and biological resources?

Agriculture uses land and other resources to feed the world. In the process, agriculture transforms the planet, including surface energy, water and nutrient balances, and the health of biological systems. Researchers at SAGE are improving our understanding of the physical and ecological outcomes of agriculture, and of the agricultural management and policies that can shape these outcomes. As part of this research, we work closely with colleagues in UW departments of Agronomy and Soils, The Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center (GLBRC), the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection (DATCP), University of Minnesota, University of Nebraska, Yale University and McGill University. Our projects also provide graduate research opportunities for students in the Nelson Institute's Environment & Resources Program. Agriculture research at SAGE is currently funded by the U.S. DOE, USAID, NASA, NSF, NOAA, Wisconsin Focus on Energy, Madison Gas & Electric, and the S.C. Johnson Company.

P.I.s

• Dr. Carol Barford assesses potential energy-crop production and broader issues in land use, farm economy, and energy.

• Dr. Chris Kucharik's work focuses on sustainable agriculture, and links between biofuels, climate, and food production.

• Dr. Jonathan Foley (now at the University of Minnesota), continues to lead a multiple SAGE research projects in agriculture, land use, and bioenergy, working with UW-Madison graduate students and post-docs.

• Dr. Mutlu Ozdogan examines the interrelationships between agriculture, water use, productivity, and climate change in arid and semi-arid regions.

• Dr. Annemarie Schneider investigates dynamic land use impacts on agriculture across a range of spatial scales by exploiting remote sensing analysis, and statistical and numerical modeling techniques.

Students & Post-Docs

Justin Bagley, Matt Johnston, Dr. Eungul Lee, Rachel Licker, Kelly Logan, Melissa Motew, Mitch Myhre, Bill Sacks, Dr. Yongjia Song, Tim Wallace, Paul West, Yang Yang, David Zaks

Ongoing Projects

Against the Grain – Analysis of the effects of widespread, intensifying agriculture on the biosphere and feedbacks to the climate system. Kucharik, Barford, Prof. Jon Foley (University of Minnesota), Dr. Mike Coe (Woods Hole Research Center), Prof. Navin Ramankutty (McGill University) and students collaborate on multiple projects, using simulation modeling and data based techniques. Funding from NASA-IDS.

Agriculture and Ecosystem Service Production Tradeoffs – West, Barford, Kucharik, Sacks, and Steve Carpenter (Center for Limnology) are using data sets and ecosystem models to quantify the global patterns of the tradeoffs between the ecosystem services of crop production, carbon storage, climate regulation, water regulation, and nitrogen regulation.  This research is done in collaboration with Holly Gibbs (Stanford University), Chad Monfreda (University of Arizona), John Wagner (The Nature Conservancy), and Jon Foley (University of Minnesota).  Funding is provided by NASA, The Smith Conservation Research Fellowship Program, and The Nature Conservancy.

Assessing Carbon Neutrality and Ecology of Different Biofuel Cropping Systems in the Midwest U.S. – Kucharik is collaborating with colleagues in the Department of Agronomy (Prof. Randy Jackson, Prof. Josh Posner) to better understand how a shift to new cropping systems or rotations may impact carbon balance across the Midwest, as well as ecosystem structure and functioning. The work is part of the Sustainability Science Team (Thrust 4) of the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center (GLBRC), funded through the U.S. Department of Energy. Studies of net ecosystem exchange, plant phenology, greenhouse gas fluxes, and soil carbon pool changes at the field scale (near the UW Agricultural Research Station at Arlington) will be used to help parameterize and validate ecosystem modeling tools designed to scale-up across the Midwest.

Climate and Management Drivers of Agricultural Productivity in Eastern Mediterranean – Ozdogan is investigating the role of local management (fertilizer use, better seeds) versus global atmospheric teleconnections (North Atlantic Oscillation) on cereal productivity in Turkey and the Middle East using empirical evidence and Agro-IBIS, an advanced ecosystem model.

Estimating Biofuel Feedstock Yields and Opportunities for Improvement – Ph.D. student Matt Johnston has used the M3 Crop Database to compare global yields of biodiesel and ethanol feedstocks, and identify regions where yields could be improved. Work done in collaboration with Prof. Jon Foley, Rachel Licker, and advisor Tracey Holloway.

Estimating the Effects of Changing Crop Management Practices on Climate and Crop Yield – Ph.D. student Bill Sacks is investigating the effects of increased irrigation, shifts in planting and harvesting dates, and changing tillage practices on both regional climate and crop yield. Sacks is using a variety of vegetation and climate models, and is assembling new data sets of planting and harvesting dates. Work done in collaboration with Kucharik and Prof. Jon Foley (University of Minnesota). Funded by NSF.

Impacts of Biofuel-driven Changes in Land Use and Cover on Flows of Water, Carbon and Nutrients to Freshwaters – Kucharik is collaborating with co-investigators of the North Temperate Lakes Long Term Ecological Research project to study how the changing distribution of croplands affect nutrient flux to freshwaters and the cycling of C in the terrestrial-aquatic system, as well as how alternative biofuel feedstocks other than corn grain might impact water quality, carbon sequestration, and climate regulation. The Agro-IBIS model is being used across the Yahara Lakes watershed in southern Wisconsin to address these questions. Funding is provided by the National Science Foundation.

Impacts of Changes in Agricultural Land-use on Soil Carbon Sequestration and Availability of Carbon Credits – Kucharik is studying the impact of prairie restoration and land-set asides associated with the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) on soil organic matter accumulation. Funding sources include the Barker Fund from the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences (CALS), Madison Gas and Electric, and S.C. Johnson, Inc.

Impacts of Historical Changes in Climate and Atmospheric CO2 on Wisconsin Agriculture – Kucharik and UW-Madison Forest Ecology graduate student Shawn Serbin developed a multi-decadal, high-resolution gridded (8 km) daily record of maximum and minimum temperature and precipitation observations across Wisconsin for the 1950 to 2006 period. These data were used in conjunction with U.S. Department of Agriculture county level yield information to quantify statistical relationships between seasonal weather indices and corn and soybean yields for 1950-2006 to determine how climate change and weather variability have contributed to trends and variability in corn and soybean yields across the state. Funding from Wisconsin Focus on Energy.

Impacts of Historical and Future Changes in Climate and Atmospheric CO2 on Terrestrial Ecosystem Structure and Functioning in the Midwestern U.S. – Kucharik is collaborating with Prof. John Lenters at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln to and Prof. Tracy Twine at the University of Minnesota to understand how past and anticipated (1948-2100) changes in agricultural land management, climate, and atmospheric CO2 have affected and will affect ecosystem structure and functioning in the Midwest U.S. region. The goals are to quantify changes in regional-scale carbon, water, and energy cycling, highlighting shifts in potential vegetation distribution and the availability of ecosystem goods and services (e.g., crop yields, forest/grassland productivity, and freshwater availability). The approach uses a Dynamic Global Vegetation Model (DGVM; Agro-IBIS), which includes detailed representation of agro-ecosystems for the U.S. Funding from the Department of Energy's National Institute on Climate Change Research (NICCR).

Impacts of Localized Urban Expansion on Croplands – Kucharik, Schneider and grad student Kelly Logan are evaluating how urbanization directly impacts cropland net primary productivity using an agro-ecosystem model (Agro-IBIS) calibrated with agricultural inventory data, remotely sensed observations, and climate data.

Introducing Remotely Sensed Irrigation Information into the USDA FAS Decision Support System – In partnership with USDA Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS), Ozdogan and graduate student Tim Wallace are developing irrigated area datasets for the Middle East and South Africa using remote sensing to improve FAS area production estimates. Funding is provided by NASA's Application Sciences Program.

Investigating the Relationship Between Land Use/Land Cover Change, Hydrologic Cycle, and Climate in Semi-Arid Central Asia – In collaboration with the Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography in PRC, Ozdogan and his students are processing satellite data to map changes in agricultural area, implementing a simple evapotranspiration model, and testing a groundwater model specifically suited for predicting the locations of recharge and discharge areas in semi-arid Central Asia.

Madison-McGill-Minnesota (M3) Datasets of Global Crops, Cropland and Pasture – Former SAGE researchers Chad Monfreda (Arizona State University), Prof. Navin Ramankutty (McGill University), and Prof. Jon Foley (University of Minnesota) combined satellite data and agricultural statistics to develop a unique resource for global agricultural analysis. The global datasets include harvested area and yield of 175 crops for circa the year 2000, gridded at 5 x 5 minute resolution, as well as cropland and pasture. These data are actively employed by researchers worldwide and here at SAGE, including Matt Johnston, Rachel Licker, Bill Sacks and David Zaks.

Monitoring the Global Impacts of Urbanization on Agricultural Resources – In collaboration with Prof. Navin Ramankutty (McGill), Schneider is investigating the impact of current and projected urban growth on agricultural lands at regional to global scales. To address how urban sprawl might affect our most agriculturally productive lands, this project integrates satellite image analysis, urban growth forecasting, field studies, and agricultural databases and census information to identify farmlands most vulnerable to urban expansion.

Monitoring and Modeling Urbanization in China – As part of a larger initiative to understand current and future land use change in 15 urban and peri-urban regions in China, Schneider and collaborator Karen Seto (Yale) are working to understand the consequences of China's economic transition, industrialization and rapid urbanization on the rate and magnitude of agricultural land loss. Funded by NASA's Land Cover-Land Use Change Program.

Monitoring the Water Cycle in the Arab Region Using NASA Satellite and Data Assimilating Model Technology – As a Co-Investigator in a joint NASA-USAID project, Ozdogan aids the development of a Land Data Assimilation System (LDAS) for the Arab region. His specific role is to assemble an up-to-date database of irrigated area and crop types to drive a suite of advanced land surface models, with the goal of providing optimal estimates of hydrological states and fluxes relevant to water resources in the region.

Patterns and Processes of the Global Agricultural System: Past, Present and Future – Ph.D. student David Zaks researches the transformative global force of agriculture. Zaks uses agricultural data and models to define novel methods to account for the costs and benefits of agricultural practices, and to identify sustainable modes of agriculture. His work is in collaboration with Barford, Kucharik and Prof. Jon Foley (University of Minnesota), and is funded by NASA and NSF.

The role of irrigated croplands in North American hydroclimatic regimes – Ozdogan and his colleagues at NASA GSFC are quantifying the effects of cropland irrigation on water and energy cycle variables over North America. Funded by NOAA, the goal of this research is to investigate irrigation's influences on the land-atmosphere interactions at regional scales with an eye towards improved initialization of land surface moisture and energy states in numerical weather prediction models.

Wisconsin Farm Biomass and the Carbon Economy – Analysis of potential energy-crop production on Wisconsin farms. Collaboration between Barford and grad student Mitch Myhre, Holloway, and Nemet. This work uses climate, remote sensing and census data sets in a Monte Carlo framework to define ranges of potential energy-crop production, and develop feasible ways to reduce farm risk via biomass production. Funding from Wisconsin Focus on Energy.

Selected Recent Publications

Donner S.D., and C.J. Kucharik (2008). Corn-based ethanol production compromises goal of reducing nitrogen export by the Mississippi River. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 105: 4513-4518. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0708300105.

Gibbs, H.K., M. Johnston, J.A. Foley, T. Holloway, C. Monfreda, N. Ramankutty, and D. Zaks. (2008). Carbon payback times for crop-based biofuel expansion in the tropics: the effects of changing yield and technology. Environmental Research Letters 3 (July-September 2008) 034001 doi:10.1088/1748-9326/3/3/034001.

Johnston, M., J.A. Foley, T. Holloway, C. Kucharik, and C. Monfreda (2009). Resetting global expectations from agricultural biofuels. Environmental Research Letters 4, 014004.

Kucharik, C.J. (2008). Contribution of planting date trends to increased maize yields in the central United States. Agronomy Journal 100, 328-336, doi:10.2134/agronj2007.0145.

Monfreda, C., N. Ramankutty, and J.A. Foley (2008). Farming the planet. Part 2: Geographic distribution of crop areas, yields, physiological types, and net primary production in the year 2000. Global Biogeochemical Cycles 22, GB1022, doi:10.1029/2007GB002947. 

Sacks W.J., Cook B.I., Buenning N., Levis S., Helkowski J.H. (2008). Effects of global irrigation on the near-surface climate. Climate Dynamics, doi:10.1007/s00382-008-0445-z.

Updated: 11/19/09

SAGE is a Research Center of the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison

Contact us with feedback, questions or accessibility issues

Copyright © 2009 Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System