Biodiversity in crops decreases fertilizer damage to rivers and lakes

Science Daily: Researchers have identified a link between the diversity of crops grown in farmlands and the pollution they create in lakes and rivers. In a Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment e-View paper, ecologists show that when the biodiversity of crops is high, less dissolved nitrogen is found exiting the surrounding watersheds.

…Whitney Broussard of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and R. Eugene Turner of Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge compiled data from the past 100 years on watersheds varying in size from the Illinois Cache River basin (400 square miles) to the Mississippi River Basin (more than a million square miles). The researchers compared this watershed data with land-use practices since the early 1900s.

…Modern farms tend to produce fewer crop varieties; this lower crop biodiversity can negatively impact surrounding watersheds. According to the study, within a given area, a higher biodiversity of crops led to less dissolved nitrogen in surrounding water bodies. The explanation for this phenomenon, Broussard says, is difficult to discern. "Diverse farms tend to have smaller fields with more edges, which can mean there's a greater buffering effect on nitrogen runoff by surrounding grasslands or woodlands," he says.

The researchers' results also showed that since 1906, the average aquatic nitrate concentration increased threefold in the entire U.S. and tenfold in the Iowa, Des Moines, and Minnesota Rivers, all of which fall in heavily tilled agricultural areas.

In areas where farming is scarce or absent, however, the authors found no perceptible change in dissolved nitrogen concentrations since the early 1900s. Broussard thinks this indicates that the impacts might be reversible if policy changes included incentives for farmers to rotate more crops, decrease their field size, increase the edges of fields and sizes of buffering zones, and incorporate more native perennial grasses into farms and in between fields.

A small dairy farm in western Maryland. Photo by Scott Bauer.