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Living Soil Film
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Our soils support 95 percent of all food production, and by 2060, our soils will be asked to give us as much food as we have consumed in the last 500 years.
60-minute documentary featuring innovative farmers and soil health experts from across the nation. The societal and environmental costs of soil loss and degradation in the U.S. are now estimated to be as high as $85 billion every single year. It’s time we changed everything we thought we knew about soil.
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Training
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Videos and Webinars
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No-Till Intensive Trainings
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8-part webinar series with farmers, researchers, or other expert practitioners. The classes will discuss common obstacles to implementing a successful no-till program, address these issues through field proven technical knowledge, and follow a training plan that will best enable the TSP (technical service provider) to support the farmers in the no-till practice transition. This course is open to any service provider working with farmers in the Northeast! Upon course completion participants will receive a No-Till Intensive Training Certificate of Completion, as well as be eligible for 8 CCA credits and 1 Pesticide credit.
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Training
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Training Resources Exchange
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Northern Bobwhite in Working Grasslands
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The northern bobwhite is often referred to and "edge" species, seeking habitat where crop fields intersect with woodlands, pastures, and old fields. The desired outcomes of project practices is 1) improved cattle production for grazing operations, 2) restore native grasses to the agricultural landscape, and 3) improve soil health, water quality, and wildlife habitat on farms.
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Information
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NRCS Conservation Practices & Materials
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Conservation Practices
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Significant anthropogenic-induced changes of climate classes since 1950
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Anthropogenic forcings have contributed to global and regional warming in the last few decades and likely affected terrestrial precipitation. Here we examine changes in major Köppen climate classes from gridded observed data and their uncertainties due to internal climate variability using control simulations from Coupled Model Intercomparison Project 5 (CMIP5). About 5.7% of the global total land area has shifted toward warmer and drier climate types from 1950–2010, and significant changes include expansion of arid and high-latitude continental climate zones, shrinkage in polar and midlatitude continental climates, poleward shifts in temperate, continental and polar climates, and increasing average elevation of tropical and polar climates. Using CMIP5 multi-model averaged historical simulations forced by observed anthropogenic and natural, or natural only, forcing components, we find that these changes of climate types since 1950 cannot be explained as natural variations but are driven by anthropogenic factors.
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Resources
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Climate Science Documents
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Soil Available Water Capacity
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High values for soil available water capacity at 1 kilometer resolution throughout the Appalachian LCC region.
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Research
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Gallery: Cave and Karst Maps
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Study Overview Maps and Foundational Datasets
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Soil Organic Matter and Sinkholes
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Sinkhole density (number per square kilometer) and soil organic matter (percent by weight) throughout the Appalachian LCC region.
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Research
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Gallery: Cave and Karst Maps
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Study Overview Maps and Foundational Datasets
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Soil Permeability
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High values for soil permeability at 1 kilometer resolution throughout the Appalachian LCC region.
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Research
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Gallery: Cave and Karst Maps
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Study Overview Maps and Foundational Datasets
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Soil Thickness
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High end of range of soil thickness at 1 kilometer resolution throughout the Appalachian LCC region.
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Research
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Gallery: Cave and Karst Maps
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Study Overview Maps and Foundational Datasets
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The links between ecosystem multifunctionality and above- and belowground biodiversity are mediated by climate
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Plant biodiversity is often correlated with ecosystem functioning in terrestrial ecosystems. However, we know little about the relative and combined effects of above- and belowground biodiversity on multiple ecosystem functions (for example, ecosystem multifunctionality, EMF) or how climate might mediate those relationships. Here we tease apart the effects of biotic and abiotic factors, both above- and belowground, on EMF on the Tibetan Plateau, China. We found that a suite of biotic and abiotic variables account for up to 86% of the variation in EMF, with the combined effects of above- and belowground biodiversity accounting for 45% of the variation in EMF. Our results have two important implications: first, including belowground biodiversity in models can improve the ability to explain and predict EMF. Second, regional-scale variation in climate, and perhaps climate change, can determine, or at least modify, the effects of biodiversity on EMF in natural ecosystems.
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Resources
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Climate Science Documents
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Worldwide evidence of a unimodal relationship between productivity and plant species richness
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The search for predictions of species diversity across environmental gradients has challenged ecologists for decades. The humped-back model (HBM) suggests that plant diversity peaks at intermediate productivity; at low productivity few species can tolerate the environmental stresses, and at high productivity a few highly competitive species dominate. Over time the HBM has become increasingly controversial, and recent studies claim to have refuted it. Here, by using data from coordinated surveys conducted throughout grasslands worldwide and comprising a wide range of site productivities, we provide evidence in support of the HBM pattern at both global and regional extents. The relationships described here provide a foundation for further research into the local, landscape, and historical factors that maintain biodiversity.
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Resources
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Climate Science Documents