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ARS Home » Midwest Area » Columbia, Missouri » Cropping Systems and Water Quality Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #422262
Research Project: Linkages Between Crop Production Management and Sustainability in the Central Mississippi River Basin

Location: Cropping Systems and Water Quality Research

Title: Cropland Common Experiment: Standardized primary metric protocols

Author
item Abendroth, Lori
item Liebig, Mark
item ROBERTSON, G - Michigan State University

Submitted to: Protocols.io
Publication Type: Research Notes
Publication Acceptance Date: 12/31/2024
Publication Date: 12/31/2024
Citation: Abendroth, L.J., Liebig, M.A., Robertson, G.P. 2024. Cropland Common Experiment: Standardized primary metric protocols. Protocols.io. https://dx.doi.org/10.17504/protocols.io.261ge59pyg47/v1
DOI: https://doi.org/10.17504/protocols.io.261ge59pyg47/v1

Interpretive Summary: This protocol is part of a large set published at protocols.io for the USDA Long Term Agroecosystem Research (LTAR) Common Experiment. This protocol provides an overview of the LTAR protocols.io collection and describes the overall effort, workflow, and intended uses of these protocols. This protocol highlights the value of these metrics for use across the nation’s working lands, allowing sites and farming practices to be robustly assessed in ways not previously possible in the U.S. The goal of the collection of protocols is to provide repeatable guidelines to achieve consistent data collection, instrument maintenance, data processing, and quality control for obtaining compatible data at agricultural sites across the U.S.

Technical Abstract: A component of the USDA ARS Long-Term Agroecosystem Research (LTAR) network is a Common Experiment standardized across all sites. In this overview protocol we describe the development of standardized protocols for the biophysical metrics collected in the Common Experiment. Throughout this collection, we refer to “metric” as the physical sample that can be quantified and used to inform the status of performance indicators within production, environment, economic, and society domains. We refer to “protocol” as the methods used to collect that metric so that all experimental sites are compatible. This set of protocols were developed for the Cropland Sites although some are also usable for Grazingland and Integrated Common Experiment Sites. This collection allows the LTAR network to ensure research is scalable and robust. All Cropland Common Experiment Sites within the network started following these protocols with the 2024 growing season.