Course Description
Sustainable agriculture systems must ensure farm profitability, income stability, and healthy food while simultaneously improving soil health, water availability and quality, and reducing GHG emissions with fewer farming inputs. We will identify sustainable management practices, discover the value of their associated ecosystem services, and explore methods in measuring their sustainability.
Athena Title
Adv Topics Sustainable Ag Mgmt
Prerequisite
CRSS 4010/6010
Semester Course Offered
Offered spring
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Course Objectives
1. Understand management practices for sustainable agriculture focusing on nutrient management, water use and quality, and carbon fluxes. 2. Build an understanding of ecosystem services as measures of sustainability and/or resilience. 3. Explore the variability in valuing ecosystems services for a range of ecosystems and management systems. Students will be given some referenced ecosystem values and will also gather additional referenced values of ecosystem services. 4. Learn methods of measuring sustainability and apply one or more to make an assessment of sustainability for the student’s own research project or for a hypothetical project.
Topical Outline
1. Attributes of Sustainable Management Practices 2. Macro nutrients (C, N, and P) and Sustainability (Nutrient Cycling in Various Agroecosystems) 3. Waste in Agroecosystems 4. Managing for Water 5. Ecosystem Services 6. Measuring Sustainability and Resilience 7. Case Studies and Methods
Syllabus