Land use dynamics within the tallgrass prairie ecosystem: the case for the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP)
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Land use dynamics within the tallgrass prairie ecosystem: the case for the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) Heidi Berger 1 & Clinton K. Meyer 2 & Anna Mummert 3 & Lauren Tirado 1 & Luis Saucedo 1 & Hannah Bonello 1 & Demetre Van Arsdale 1 & Grace Williams 2 Received: 29 May 2019 / Accepted: 20 February 2020 # Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract Tallgrass prairie has been reduced to a fraction of its original extent, due to rapid conversion to other land use types, especially agricultural and urban. Restoration is a relatively new process to convert agricultural land back to communities dominated by native vegetation. We used a differential equations compartmental model to quantify changes between land use types, incorporating the impact of human population within the Midwestern tallgrass prairie ecosystem. We considered transitions between native prairie, prairie restored through the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), agricultural, and urban land. We used historical data to determine parameter ranges. Sensitivity analyses emphasize the importance of increasing incentives for CRP enrollment as a means to restoring the tallgrass prairie ecosystem. Keywords Prairie restoration . Differential equations model . Midwest . Ecosystem model . Human impact on ecosystem . Parameter estimation . Sensitivity analysis
Introduction The tallgrass prairie ecosystem is considered the most degraded ecosystem in North America (Rickletts et al. 1999). Highlights • Compartment model of land use within the US tallgrass prairie ecosystem is presented. • Data-driven model parameters match historical land use dynamics. • Model predicts original tallgrass prairie will disappear within just a few decades. • Model predicts Conservation Researve Program (CRP) enrollment just under 15% of orginal prairie lands. • CRP enrollment must increase to preserve the prairie ecosystem. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s12080-020-00452-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Heidi Berger [email protected] 1
Mathematics Department, Simpson College, 701 North C Street, Indianola, IA, USA
2
Department of Biology & Environmental Science, Simpson College, 701 North C Street, Indianola, IA, USA
3
Mathematics Department, Marshall University, 1 John Marshall Drive, Huntington, WV, USA
Historically, there were ~ 162 million ha of prairie within the Great Plains, ~ 68 million ha of which were tallgrass prairie (Sampson and Knopf 1994). Tallgrass prairie reduction rates range by state from 82 to over 99% (Sampson and Knopf 1994). The majority was destroyed through conversion to agriculture following the mid-1800s European settlement supported by the 1862 US Homestead Act (Ostlie et al. 1997). Continued losses have been driven by agricultural policies and practices within the US (Barnes 1993), with states such as Illinois, Indiana, and Iowa losing virtually all historic prairie (Sampson and Knopf 1994) because of deep, fertile soils. Urba
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