April 18, 2012 | Leopold Center

News Release – AMES, Iowa – The Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture website is featuring results from four recently completed projects. The Center provides support for research, education, and demonstration projects to help Iowa farmers at all levels with production and marketing issues. Among the recently completed projects:

Assessment of woody biomass as a niche feedstock for biobased products in Iowa.

Iowa is the nation’s leader in grain-based ethanol production and also could contribute significantly to cellulosic energy production that uses woody biomass. This project looked at Iowa’s existing forest resources and several other factors for supplying this potential new market. Check out the Research Summary.

Increasing carbon sequestration of working prairie by reducing invasive species in a fire and grazing system.

Investigators explored whether native prairie grasses sequester more carbon than introduced grasses such as tall fescue, using data from research plots in southern Iowa managed in a patch-burn grazing regime. Check out the Research Summary.

Mapping potential foodsheds in Iowa: A system optimization modeling approach.

This project developed two new metrics to guide strategic planning toward more localized food systems. The work emphasized minimizing the distance between population centers and available cropland, as well as accounting for variations in yield among 40 of the most marketable food crops that can be grown in the Midwest. Check out the Research Summary.

Renewable energy feed-in tariffs: Potential opportunities for Iowa.

Farmers and rural landowners who invest in small-scale renewable energy technologies such as wind turbines could benefit from this flexible and effective policy tool, now used by only one utility company in Iowa. Check out the Research Summary.

See these and other research summaries on the Center’s website at:

http://www.leopold.iastate.edu/grants/completed

The Leopold Center has funded more than 430 competitive grant projects since 1988 under four initiatives: Marketing and Food Systems, Ecology, Policy and Cross-cutting.