| | The Parkland Conservation Farm (PCF) serves up extension programs spiced with results from on-the-spot research. And the practices on the menu all feature healthy soils. Since 1992, PCF has been a learning centre for producers, youth and others on sustainable crop and livestock production. This 600-acre working farm near Vegreville is operated by the Parkland Conservation Farm Association, an independent, non-profit organization.
PCF Extension Coordinator Kelly Montgomery conducts tours, demonstrations and other extension activities throughout the year. Her programs keep producers up to date on management options that provide economic and environmental benefits, including improved soil quality.
For example, Montgomery says, “PCF has teamed up with Reduced Tillage LINKAGES and AAFRD’s AgTech Centre to compare residue managers for direct seeding into heavy crop residues.” This trial, which will be extended to a second year in 2005, is assessing the performance of various ground openers in terms of crop emergence, plant density and yields. She adds, “Producers are quite interested to see the new technology for residue managers.”
Another example is a pasture re-establishment demonstration funded by the National Greenhouse Gas Mitigation Program. Montgomery says, “We are promoting the use of direct seeding to re-establish forage stands, rather than using tillage and then re-seeding. You’re seeding right into an existing field, so soil carbon is conserved as well as soil moisture and fertility, and you save a lot of time because you’re not crossing over the land three or four times.”
PCF has been home to a wide variety of research studies since its inception. Along with the advancing scientific knowledge, the studies enrich PCF’s extension activities. For instance, when Montgomery talks to producers about different tillage systems, she can draw on results from a long-term PCF study that found significantly higher total organic carbon and total nitrogen in the soil of a direct seeded site as compared to a conventionally tilled site.
PCF’s major partners are: Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada; Alberta Agriculture, Food and Rural Development (AAFRD); Ducks Unlimited Canada (DUC); North American Waterfowl Management Plan; and local municipalities, farmers and agri-businesses. If you are interested in visiting the farm or learning more about its programs, call the PCF at 780-632-2244.
Soils, landscapes & greenhouse gases
Another soil-related research study at PCF is the Agriculture and Wetlands Greenhouse Gas Initiative. The multi-agency, multi-disciplinary initiative began in fall 2002 and will run until at least 2007. Funded by DUC’s Institute for Wetland and Waterfowl Research, the initiative is composed of five interlinked projects to study greenhouse gas dynamics in prairie agricultural landscapes including wetlands.
Tom Goddard of AAFRD is leading the study’s project in Alberta. Around three small wetlands at PCF, the research team is monitoring the three main greenhouse gas considerations in agriculture – methane emissions, nitrous oxide emissions, and carbon storage – along with other characteristics such as soil moisture, crop yield and wetland biomass.
Goddard says PCF was chosen as the initiative’s Alberta site partly because “the farm is rich in baseline data” after so many years of hosting research and demonstration projects. As well, the PCF staff carry out the sampling of the soil gas emissions.
Having people on-site to do the sampling is especially useful because of the project’s unusually intensive sampling protocol. They must collect samples several times a week during periods when greenhouse gas emissions are high (such as spring thaw) to capture each emission event, and their monitoring season lasts from March to November for a more complete annual record. And the most distinctive feature of this protocol is its landscape approach. For each wetland, they collect samples at seven or eight points along a transect, starting at the hilltop and going right down to the deepest part of the wetland.
Goddard says, “I don’t know of anybody else who is measuring greenhouse gases emissions on a landscape basis, so other [researchers in Canada and the U.S.] are quite interested in our data.” He adds, “This landscape variability is the reality that farmers have to deal with.”
Another unusual element of the project is that the three wetlands are dry for part of the year. Like many prairie wetlands, they fill up with spring runoff and then dry out in the summer, except perhaps after rainstorms. Their wetting and drying cycles affect emissions.
As a result, the project is providing a host of new information on the variability of emissions across a landscape and over time that will improve calculations of Canada’s national greenhouse gas emissions inventory. |
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