Collaborative Research: The Cuban landscape, quantifying the effects of industrialized agriculture followed by country-wide soil conservation using sediment-associated isotopes

为了最大限度地减少砍伐森林和集约机械化农业的有害影响，经常采用保护性农业做法。尽管这些影响较小的做法已在世界各地实施，但结果很少在景观范围内量化。古巴是测试这些影响的完美地点，因为在前苏联解体后，30年的工业化、机械化的单一种植之后，又有25年的以需求为导向的小规模有机农业。该项目将记录向有机农业转变的影响，并为土壤保持研究提供重要数据。通过该项目，一名硕士研究生、两名高水平本科生和四名低水平本科生将接受地球科学研究方面的培训，并学习可持续农业实践。该项目有两个研究目标。1)它将量化农业土地利用从传统的机械化单一种植到小规模有机农业的广泛变化的影响。该项目将使用河沙中的化学示踪剂来测量周围景观的长期侵蚀率，并将这些侵蚀率与已公布的测量短期侵蚀率的数据进行比较。此外，研究人员将使用其他不同的化学示踪剂追踪从工业农业向有机农业过渡过程中侵蚀深度的变化。2)该项目将开发测量目前不易研究的岩石类型的侵蚀速率的新技术，从而扩大世界上可以测量侵蚀速率的区域。该奖项由地貌学和土地利用动力学计划和国际科学与工程办公室共同资助。

To minimize the detrimental effects of deforestation and intensive, mechanized agriculture, conservation agricultural practices are often employed. Although these lower-impact practices have been implemented around the world, results have rarely been quantified at a landscape scale. Cuba is a perfect location to test these effects because 30 years of industrial, mechanized monoculture were followed by 25 years of necessity-driven, small-scale, organic agriculture after the collapse of the former Soviet Union. This project will document the effects of the conversion to organic agriculture and provide important data to inform soil conservation studies. Through this project, one Masters student, two upper-level undergraduate students, and four lower-level undergraduate students will be trained in geoscience research and learn about sustainable agricultural practices. This project has two research goals. 1) It will quantify the effects of wide-spread changes in agricultural land use from conventional, mechanized monoculture to small-scale organic farming. This project will use chemical tracers in river sand to measure long-term erosion rates of the surrounding landscape and will compare those erosion rates to published data measuring short-term erosion rates. In addition, researchers will trace the changing depth of erosion during the transition from industrial to organic agriculture using other different chemical tracers. 2) The project will develop new techniques for measuring erosion rates in rock types currently not easily studied, thus expanding areas of the world where erosion rates can be measured.This award is co-funded by the Geomorphology and Land-use Dynamics Program and the Office of International Science and Engineering.