Iowa State to study how prairie plants on C.R. airport land stops farm runoff

Wearing an Iowa State University shirt and hat, Cedar Rapids Mayor Ron Corbett on Friday filled a planter with prairie seeds and planted milkweed on farmland owned by The Eastern Iowa Airport.

The airport, owned by the city of Cedar Rapids, is working with ISU to determine how to best address nutrient runoff on its almost 2,000 acres of farmland. But it needs to know what the runoff is and what impact actions have on reducing the nutrient loss.

ISU's research team for STRIPS - Science-based Trials of Rowcrops Integrated with Prairie Strips - established experimental study sites in central Iowa at the Neal Smith National Wildlife Refuge in 2007. The researchers converted 10 percent of the row-crop land to native prairie strips.

Between 2007 to 2012, the team found that the 10 percent conversion to prairie reduced sediment export by 95 percent, total phosphorus export by 90 percent, and total nitrogen export by nearly 85 percent when compared with the losses from 100 percent row-crop, no-till watersheds.

The STRIPS team is expanding its research to six new sites across the state, including one at the airport. A 100-acre section of land will be divided into a test field and a control field with measurement tools installed to test the outflow from both fields.

Approximately 10 percent of the test field will be planted with native prairie strips. Lisa Schulte Moore, associate professor of natural resource ecology and management at Iowa State University, said ISU's partnership with the airport and the city of Cedar Rapids is mutually beneficial.

'Working with The Eastern Iowa Airport provides the STRIPS team with increased visibility for our science and the prairie strips practice,” Moore said. 'A lot more people will be able to see the prairie strips practice in this location.

'They also will have a better sense of the effort associated with STRIPS when they see our monitoring equipment in the field and our scientists out collecting data.”