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ARS Home » Southeast Area » Tifton, Georgia » Southeast Watershed Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #404517
Research Project: Shifting the Balance of Water Resources and Interacting Agroecosystem Services Toward Sustainable Outcomes in Watersheds of the Southern Coastal Plain

Location: Southeast Watershed Research

Title: Identifying spatial frameworks for the analysis of agroecosystems: the Long-Term Agroecosystem Research Network Regionalization Project

Author
item Coffin, Alisa
item Baffaut, Claire
item Goslee, Sarah
item Pisarello, Kathryn
item PONCE-CAMPOS, GUILLERMO - University Of Arizona

Submitted to: Meeting Abstract
Publication Type: Abstract Only
Publication Acceptance Date: 6/1/2023
Publication Date: N/A
Citation: N/A

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: Ensuring food, fuel, and fiber for the future requires sustaining and enhancing agroecosystems to provide a multitude of benefits while minimizing environmental impacts. The Long-Term Agroecosystem Research (LTAR) Network was established by the United States Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS) as a platform for research, education, and outreach to improve the current and future capacity of farmers and ranchers to provide agricultural commodities and other agroecosystem goods and services. The Network is dedicated to researching strategies across interacting domains of productivity, human dimensions, and environmental quality. The need for quantifiable spatial regionalizations for the LTAR Network was first articulated in 2017. In response, separate regional frameworks for these three domains were formed through knowledge-based identification of key variables and prior literature. Variables included in the analyses were selected from published datasets on environmental characteristics, agricultural productivity for crops and livestock, and social and economic variables. Results suggest that applications of these frameworks will vary depending on the questions asked and the spatial requirements of the research. Regionalizations derived from variables pertaining to environmental, crop production and large livestock systems tend to produce more spatially contiguous areas due to strong spatial patterns in driving variables, and may be best suited to characterizing commodity agriculture. Regions based on variables related to small livestock systems and human dimensions are less contiguous, which can pose challenges for defining study areas. All are crucial for identifying geographies for social and agricultural research. This framework is intended to supplement existing spatial frameworks (e.g., watersheds or ecoregions) in cases where those geographies are poorly suited to representing agroecological systems or processes.