Working Landscapes: Transdisciplinary Research on Bioenergy and Agroforestry Alternatives for an Illinois Watershed.

Abstract

This investigation is a complete case study of transdisciplinary research. The goals were to engage farmers in exploring landscape patterns for perennial agriculture and to assess resulting environmental impacts. Transdisciplinary research involves participants from several academic disciplines and nonacademic stakeholders, who work together toward a single research goal relevant to a societal problem. Participation in transdisciplinary research can be enhanced through the use of boundary objects, which are conceptual tools that promote cooperation without requiring consensus and that allow meaningful discussion of complex issues. When research explores landscape change, landscapes or landscape representations may be used as boundary objects. Working with farmers in an Illinois watershed, I developed future landscape patterns (FLPs) that include perennial bioenergy crops (PBC) within the corn/soy agricultural matrix to develop societally acceptable PBC farming systems. My results suggest that employing real places, landscape visualizations, and spatially explicit datasets as landscape boundary objects is an effective means of involving stakeholders. Next, I used a spatially explicit model of bee abundance to explore effects on wild bee habitat of the FLP’s crop composition, total PBC area, and landscape configuration. I found that more PBC area enhanced bee habitat. Prairie provided the greatest modeled bee abundance, followed by switchgrass and then by willow. Landscape configuration altered the proportion of PBC within a given distance from a specific location in the landscape, but did not affect overall modeled bee abundance at the level of the watershed. Next, I developed additional FLPs that represent spatial patterns associated with temperate agroforestry: willow/prairie alley cropping and entire-field management. I found that alley crop composition significantly influenced modeled bee abundance. Specifically, prairie provided the greatest modeled bee abundance, followed by alley cropping, and then by willow. Entire-field management did not affect overall modeled bee abundance, but did affect distribution of habitat. My results suggest that simply incorporating PBC into the corn/soy agricultural system will enhance wild bee habitat, but that crop composition, area converted to PBC, and agroforestry strategies could further enhance wild bee habitat in agricultural landscapes.