Harnessing the potential for agricultural innovation to ensure resilience at the farm and landscape level.
Regenerative and Climate-Smart Landscapes
Issue
As collective interest in multifunctional agriculture and the need to address climate change grows, producers have become willing to embrace new crop and animal production systems. This initiative aims to catalyze research, education, and outreach to fulfill a vision of a vibrant, technologically savvy, climate-smart, and environmentally friendly agriculture that provides diversified services. Pennsylvania’s abundant water supply and heterogenous landscape offer ample opportunities to embrace a regenerative and climate-smart agriculture that can be the linchpin of resilient and networked supply chains.
The convergence of agriculture and climate solutions
Fields are no longer considered discrete, isolated, and homogenous production units. Powered by new remote and proximal sensing systems, precision agriculture equipment (e.g., equipment that applies variable rates of fertilizers and pesticides to ensure that each square foot of the field receives the right amount), artificial intelligence, and the internet of things, the field as a management unit is being reconceptualized as a collection of highly heterogenous subunits that can be tailor-managed to accomplish production and environmental goals. In addition, producers are increasingly aware of the need for agricultural diversification, and practices like cover cropping, double cropping, and intercropping are now common. Aligned with these new production practices are new technologies that facilitate their adoption (for example, the use of drones for aerial seeding into a standing crop). These new production systems have a largely untapped potential to store soil carbon, suppress the emission of greenhouse gases where they are emitted, capture solar radiation, and produce food with a low carbon and low pollutant intensity. There is increasing awareness that agriculture is affected by climate and vice versa, and these effects need to be quantified.
Researchers in this initiative aim to harness emerging opportunities to tackle existing challenges and create innovative solutions for a society that is increasingly willing to account for the cost and pay for the benefits of regenerative and climate-smart agriculture. Our two-pronged approach includes discovering new methods to mitigate and adapt to climate change.
Convener
Daniela Carrijo, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor and Extension Specialist, Grain Production
Department of Plant Science
Associated Members
Associates
- Austin Brown, Extension Specialist, Small Ruminant Production & Management
- Mary Ann Bruns, Associate Professor, Soil Microbiology and Biogeochemistry
- Harry Crissy, Extension Educator, Business and Community Vitality
- Paul Esker, Assistant Professor, Epidemiology and Field Crop Pathology*
- Lara Fowler, Senior Lecturer, Penn State Law & Assistant Director IEE*
- Heather Grab, Assistant Professor, Entomology
- Michele Grinar, Assistant Teaching Professor, Biology
- Alexander Hristov, Distinguished Professor, Dairy Nutrition
- Margaret Hoffman, Assistant Professor, Landscape Contracting*
- Michael Jacobson, Professor, Forest Resources*
- Heather Karsten, Associate Professor of Crop Production / Ecology*
- Armen Kemanian, Professor, Plant Science
- Tom Richard, Professor Emeritus, Agricultural and Biological Engineering*
- Matthew Royer, Assistant Research Professor, Director Agriculture & Environment Center*
- Josephine Wee, Assistant Professor, Food Science*
- Guojie Wang, Assistant Professor/Extension Specialist in Forage Crop Systems, Plant Science
Affiliates
- Elizabeth Boyer, Professor, Water Resources*
- Michela Centinari, Associate Professor of Viticulture
- Amber Cesare, STEM Education Outreach Specialist, College of Education*
- Christine Costello, Assistant Professor of Agricultural & Biological Engineering
- Estelle Couradeau, Assistant Professor, Soils & Environmental Microbiology*
- Kenneth Davis, Professor of Atmospheric & Climate Science*
- Francesco Di Gioia, Assistant Professor, Vegetable Crop Science*
- Francisco Dini Andreote, Assistant Professor, Phytobiomes*
- Jill Felker, Lecturer, Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
- Michael Fidanza, Professor, Horticulture*
- Erika Ganda, Assistant Professor of Food Animal Microbiomes*
- Sarah Goslee, Adjunct Associate Professor, Agronomy, USDA-ARS*
- Mariantonieta Gutierrez Soto, Assistant Professor, Architectural Engineering
- Jill Hamilton, Assistant Professor, Director of the Schatz Center in Tree Molecular Genetics*
- Bruce Logan, Kappe Professor, Environmental Engineering*
- Carolyn Lowry, Assistant Professor*
- Marc McDill, Associate Professor, Forest Management
- Felipe Montes, Assistant Research Professor, Plant Sciences
- Robert Nicholas, Associate Research Professor*
- Belén Noroña, Assistant Professor of Geography
- Claudia Schmidt, Assistant Professor, Agricultural Economics*
- Christopher Scott, Professor, Ecosystem Science & Management
- Rui Shi, Assistant Professor, Chemical Engineering*
- Sailesh Sigdel, Postdoctoral Scholar, Agricultural & Biological Engineering
- Hong Wu, Stuckeman Career Development Assistant Professor in Design*
- Katherine Zipp, Associate Professor, Environmental & Resource Economics
