Grassland birds must have accessible, nutritional prey for nestlings which Conservation Reserve Program practices like CP33—Habitat Buffers for Upland Birds may provide. In 2008—2009, I monitored dickcissel nests in and around CP33 buffers at a farm in north-central Mississippi using video cameras to capture provisioning activities. I simultaneously observed foraging flights and measured distances traveled from nests. Orthopterans were the most commonly chosen prey, and dickcissels brought larger prey items when chicks were older. But, other changes in provisioning were not significantly related to nest age as I hypothesized. Also contrary to my initial hypotheses, provisioning at nests within buffers did not differ from non-buffer nests. CRP grasslands were equivalent to other available habitats. Provisioning rate and biomass decreased when an observer was present, and male feeding increased provisioning rate. Incorporating native warm-season grasses through conservation programs can increase nesting and foraging resources for dickcissels.

Master of Science / Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering / Donghai Wang / Biomass torrefaction is an important preprocessing step in improving biomass quality, specifically in terms of physical properties and chemical composition. The objective of this research was to study effects of torrefaction as a pretreatment method on chemical and elemental compositions and thermal properties of Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) biomass. Most CRP grasslands are a mixture of native grasses, and in the state of Kansas, species including indiangrass, big bluestem, little bluestem, sideoats grama, and switchgrass comprise a majority of CRP grounds. Pure forms of big bluestem biomass were analyzed and compared with a mixture of the species that make up CRP lands. Two strategies for torrefaction were tested: one with a pre-dry step and one without. After torrefaction, big bluestem and CRP biomass showed an increase in energy density, making the biomass more attractive as a biofuel source than raw biomass. Big bluestem also showed slightly higher calorific values than that of CRP biomass. The torrefaction process had a significant effect on chemical composition and elemental composition of the biomass. Carbon content increased and oxygen content decreased as torrefaction temperature increased. Glucan and xylose decreased and lignin increased as torrefaction temperature increased. Pre-drying biomass before torrefaction is beneficial to torrefaction of biomass with high moisture content because moisture removal leads to less dry matter loss while maintaining the same calorific value.

abstract: Payments for ecosystem services (PES) are transactions between landholders and the beneficiaries of the services their land provides. PES schemes are growing worldwide with annual transactions over ten billion dollars (Salzman et al., 2018). Much can be learned from looking at oldest and best funded PES schemes on working agricultural land. Initiated in 1985, the USDA’s Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) is the oldest private conservation PES program in the United States. CRP incentivizes farmers to put their land into conservation through an annual payment. In Iowa, CRP has been a source of extra income and a way for farmers to buffer the fluctuating costs of cash crops, such as corn and soy. The dominance of agriculture in Iowa poses many challenges for water quality. A potential solution to the problem, implemented through CRP, is the use of conservation practices to mitigate the negative effects of agricultural run-off. This dissertation considers three aspects of the problem: 1. the relationship between changes in land cover due to CRP enrollment and changes in water quality, controlling for a range of factors known to have an effect on the filtering role of different land covers; 2. the inter-annual variability in water quality measures and enrollment in different CRP conservation practices to examine the cost-effectiveness of specific conservation practices in mitigating lake sedimentation and eutrophication; 3. discrete choice models to identify what characteristics drive the enrollment by farmers into specific conservation practices. Results indicate that land cover and CRP have different impacts on different indicators of lake water quality. In addition, conservation practices that were cost-effective for one water quality variable tended to be cost-effective for the other water quality variables. Farmers are making decisions to enroll in CRP based on the opportunity cost of the land. Therefore, it is necessary to alter financial incentives to promote productive land being putting into CRP through continuous sign-up. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) needs a more effective way to calculate the payment level for practices in order to be competitive with the predicted value of major crops. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Biology 2019

The chapters of this dissertation explore complementary areas of applied microeconomics, within the fields of experimental and environmental economics. In each case, preferences and institutions interact in ways that enhance or subvert efficiency. The first chapter, "The Girl Scout Cookie Phenomenon," uses a laboratory experiment to study favor trading in a public goods setting. The ability to practice targeted reciprocity increases contributions by 14%, which corresponds directly to increased efficiency. Subjects discriminate by rewarding group members who have been generous and withholding rewards from ungenerous group members. At least some reciprocal behavior is rooted in other-regarding preferences. When someone is outside the "circle of reciprocity," he gives less to the public good than in other settings. We find no evidence of indirect reciprocity. We find two behavioral types in each treatment, differing in baseline giving but not in tendency to reciprocate. The second chapter, "The Effects of Conservation Reserve Program Participation on Later Land Use," studies another public goods issue: conservation. The Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) pays farmers to retire farmland. We use a treatment effect framework to find that ex-CRP land is 21-28% more likely to be farmed than comparable non-CRP land. This implies that the CRP improves low-quality land, making it more attractive to farm. This could demonstrate inefficiency, since farmers gain private benefit from a program meant to provide a public good. On the other hand, farmed ex-CRP land is more likely to adopt conservation practices, although this may not be caused by CRP participation. The third chapter, "Learning from Mistakes," examines financial decisions by adult Rwandans in institutions inside and outside the lab. Over 50% of subjects make irrational choices over risk—choices that likely do not reflect their preferences, and are therefore likely inefficient—and these subjects share tendencies in their take-up of financial instruments. Risk-averse individuals are more likely to belong to a savings group and less likely to take out an informal loan. For those who make mistakes, however, as they become more risk averse, they are less likely to belong to a savings group and more likely to take up informal credit.

Thesis (M.S.)--Wildlife and Fisheries Sciences Dept., South Dakota State University, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 74-85). Also available via the World Wide Web.

Northern bobwhite (hereafter, bobwhite; Colinus virginianus) have experienced long-term declines in population abundance throughout most of their breeding range. In 2004, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) authorized mid-contract management (MCM) to restore early successional plant communities in aging Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) fields. I evaluated the effects of 3 MCM regimes, including fall strip disking, fall herbicide spraying (hereafter, spray), and fall herbicide spraying in combination with spring legume interseeding (hereafter, spray-seed) on nearly 650 ha of tall fescue (Schedonorus phoenix [Scop]. Holub; nomenclature follows USDA plants database; see USDA 2010b) CRP in south-central Illinois, USA, during 2005-2008. The objectives of this study were to: 1) evaluate the compositional and structural responses of the vegetation community to MCM, 2) determine the structural vegetation and landscape composition variables that influenced adult bobwhite relative densities and brood presence in CRP, and 3) assess foraging rates and arthropod prey selection of bobwhite chicks relative to MCM. Spray and spray-seed treatments were more effective than disking at reducing tall fescue cover, increasing plant species diversity, and enhancing the structural characteristics of the plant community that are essential for nesting and brood-rearing bobwhite. Spray-seed and disked treatments increased the percentage of bare ground by burying the dead and dying vegetative biomass beneath the soil surface. However, spraying alone left large amounts of litter accumulation on the soil surface that resulted in a delay in the timing of some annual forbs to recolonize. Plant species composition in sprayed and spray-seeded fields changed from a dense, monoculture of tall fescue to a diverse assemblage of perennial grasses, annual forbs, and legumes that provided habitat for nesting and brood-rearing bobwhite. Adult bobwhite and broods responded positively to spray and spray-seed treatments in this study. Adult relative densities (i.e., number of adult bobwhite observed / ha) were higher in sprayed and spray-seeded fields than in disked and controls. The probability of higher relative densities was greater in fields with higher plant species diversity, and percentages of bare ground and legumes. Conversely, relative densities were negatively associated with higher percentages of grass cover. At the landscape scale, relative densities were positively correlated higher percentages of cropland and pastureland within a 250 m buffer of CRP fields. Sprayed and spray-seeded fields were 39.6% more likely to have broods present than control fields. Whereas disked fields were only 10.0% more likely to have broods than controls. Brood presence was positively correlated with higher percentages of bare ground and negatively correlated with higher percentages of grass cover. Human-imprinted bobwhite chicks consumed a higher abundance and biomass of arthropods in sprayed and spray-seeded fields than in disked and controls, although the abundance of arthropods available was generally highest in control and disked fields. This suggests, therefore, that bobwhite chicks foraging rates are not limited by arthropod availability, but rather, by the structure of the vegetative community and the ability of the chicks to access the food resources. Chicks consumed a higher proportion of hymenopterans, isopods, and lepidopterans than expected from nonrandom feeding indicating that they were actively selecting for particular prey. This research has added to the understanding of restoring bobwhite habitat to tall fescue CRP, and could assist USDA-Natural Resource Conservation Service personnel and other land managers in restoring and maintaining marginally diverse grassland ecosystems in CRP fields for nesting and brood-rearing bobwhite.

North American populations of grassland birds have been declining consistently for the past several decades. Grassland birds respond to multiple scales which encompass a spectrum of habitat variables, and the habitat scale of importance may depend on the response of interest. For practitioners, having knowledge of the effect of scale is useful because conservation efforts can be focused at the most appropriate scale. However, previous multi-scale studies of grassland birds and other taxa have rarely incorporated on-the-ground habitat management while simultaneously investigating site-specific species turnover dynamics (Chapter 1) and daily nest survival (Chapter 2). Also, habitat management-related studies often suffer when not accounting for inherent variation between fields, field landscapes, and study year; thus, to disentangle specific effects of management, it is important to account for this variation by using these factors as random effects within mixed-effects models (Chapter 3). Understanding multi-scale habitat relationships affecting site turnover, also known as dynamic occupancy, and daily nest survival rate (nest survival or DSR), as well as how multiple avian responses vary with grassland management would further benefit conservation decision making for focal species. I investigated dynamic occupancy and nest survival of both obligate and facultative grassland species relative to multi-scale habitat factors on private lands (Conservation Reserve Program) in northwest Illinois during 2011-2014. I also conducted a separate analysis focusing on how multiple avian responses, ranging from species presence/absence (P/A) to species-specific nest survival, are influenced by non-fire grassland management treatments. For dynamic occupancy, a combination of ≥2 scales always outperformed single-scale models for all species. Three of 7 species responded to either cumulative habitat management (proportion of field managed over the study period) or yearly management (33% of field managed before a particular breeding season) regardless of dominant grass type. Of the 48 covariates appearing in top models across species for both dynamic and single-season occupancy, microhabitat covariates (42%) were represented most often, followed by patch-scale (33%) and landscape-scale (25%) factors. Covariates with the most consistent effects and the greatest frequencies appearing in competitive (∆AIC ≤ 4) dynamic and single-season occupancy models included landscape forest cover (n = 10), surrounding patch grassland cover (n = 7), and field size (n = 6). In general, increasing levels of forest cover adjoining fields had consistently negative effects on occupancy, colonization, and persistence across species, while grassland surrounding fields and field size had positive effects on these responses. Microhabitat covariates better explained colonization and extinction across the focal species. Of the 22 habitat covariates in top colonization and extinction models, microhabitat variables were represented 50% of the time, compared to 32% and 18% representation for patch-scale and landscape-scale covariates, respectively. I recommend that wildlife biologists utilize habitat management techniques to ensure grassland birds have different successional stages within their range of preferences. My results suggest that grassland disturbance, while influencing turnover dynamics of different species, may be less influential within smaller fields and landscapes dominated by forest cover. I analyzed the daily nest survival rate for 2 species (red-winged blackbirds and dickcissels) and 2 groups of nesting communities (ground and above-ground nesters). Temporal variables such as Julian date and stage of nest were significant predictors of nest survival for red-wings (50.58 ∆AICc = best temporal model) and dickcissels (2.28 ∆AICc = best temporal model) in addition to habitat covariates. In 3 of 4 analyses ≥2 habitat scales were better predictors of nest survival over one scale. For ground nesters the patch scale was be best predictor of nest survival. However, the best model for ground nesters did not have overwhelming support compared to the random model (1.43 ∆AICc). The ground-nesting community appeared to suffer decreased nest survival with increasing proportion of surrounding grassland. The blackbird top model included nest- and landscape-scale covariates, and top models for dickcissels and the above-ground nesting community included the nest- and patch-scale covariates. Blackbirds had a significant increase in nest survival when nests were placed in areas with higher vegetation density and height (greater visual obstruction). Comparatively, the predictive ability of habitat covariates was not as strong for the other 3 analyses; however, notable patterns include dickcissel nest survival decreasing with increasing nest distance to edge and above-ground nests had increased nest survival with increasing patch perimeter-area-ratio. My results suggest different species are responding to different scales, but finer-scale habitat covariates generally help predict nest survival over course-scale habitat features, such as landscape covariates. Songbird nest survival maybe more influenced by fine-scale habitat characteristics such as nesting cover and field vegetation complexity and density, which can deter nest predators and reduce their search efficiency. In a way, this is positive news for practitioners working in grasslands patches located in less than ideal patch or landscape configurations, suggesting more effort could be focused on improving conditions for colonization and persistence of focal species (Chapter 1). By focusing management on dynamic occupancy responses, increasing potential nesting habitat and territory quality for focal species will likely follow. When investigating multiple avian responses to management, within a consistent mixed-effect modeling framework, it appeared that avian survey related responses were best supported, having consistently larger ∆AICc values for top models, when compared to nesting-related data. One explanation of this relative difference could be attributed sample size difference between analyses. Focusing on the effects of management, this analysis accounted for inherent variation across fields, year, and potentially field landscape, as random effects within all models. As suggested from Chapter 2, and despite a large sample of nests, explanation of DSR across all species and focal species showed little improvement with management covariates. Brome fields cumulatively managed with spray or spray/seed treatments (Chapter 1) appeared to respond most and likely explained general positive effects for red-winged blackbird and dickcissel abundance; however, this was at a cost to species abundance for bobolink (Dolichonyx oryzivorus), Henslow’s sparrow (Ammodramus henslowii), eastern meadowlark (Sturnella magna), field sparrow (Spizella pusilla), and northern bobwhites (Colinus virginianus), due to the release of tall forbs within the seed bank after spraying brome dominated fields. Dramatic vegetation responses in sprayed brome fields likely led to an overall decrease in obligate-grassland bird richness and conservation value on brome field types that were cumulatively management over the course of the study. These results suggest the importance of non-native brome CRP fields for certain grassland-obligate bird species, while also revealing the apparent decoupling of nest survival and other avian responses measured commonly. I suggest managers and researchers pay closer attention to variables affecting nesting abundance/density in grassland systems when possible and recognize the potential importance of non-native grasses for grassland-obligate birds in some regions.

By 1980, the United States had lost over 50 percent of its original wetland resources. The U.S. National Wetland Inventory estimates that 95 percent of annual wetland losses since 1955 occurred to palustrine wetlands. The majority of these losses occurred to the three types of palustrine vegetated wetlands: emergent, forested, and shrub. The primary cause for wetland losses from the mid-1950s to the mid-1980s was agricultural conversion supported by federal agricultural policies, especially the Agricultural Conservation Program that provided significant direct and indirect support for wetland conversions. The rate of converting wetland to agriculture has declined since the mid-1950's with a significant decrease occurring between the mid-1970s and mid-1990s. Statistical analysis using correlation, regression and principal component analysis was performed to identify the major contributory factors in loss rates in the Midwest, Lower Mississippi River Valley and the Southeast United States. The variables considered are: Swampbuster provisions of the Food and Security Act of 1985, Conservation Reserve Program enrolled acreage and rental rates, Wetland Reserve Program and The Clean Water Act Section 404 permits; prices of corn, soybeans and wheat; and the percent of wetlands remaining. The results indicated agricultural policies and Clean Water Act Section 404 permits and wetland loss rates were negatively correlated and prices of corn, soybeans and wheat were positively correlated. The percentage of wetlands remaining, were also positively correlated with loss rates. Taken together, the selected agricultural policies, Section 404 permits, commodity prices and percent of wetland remaining, explain 96 percent of the variance in wetland loss rates and 94 percent of the agricultural losses nationally. These results are consistent, with minor variations, across geographic wetland strata and wetland types. Regional differences exist in the major type of wetland losses; emergent wetland losses were more prevalent in the agricultural Midwest, with forested wetland losses concentrated in the Lower Mississippi River Valley and the Southeast United States. The results of this research reflect the intricate relationships between federal legislation, regulatory programs, legal decisions, economic factors, and changes in society's view and understanding of the importance of wetlands and the need to merge conservation programs with agricultural policies. Economic factors exert a significant impact in decision-making of whether to convert or conserve wetland resources. The economic feasibility of installing drainage system to make wetlands farmable depends upon the relationship of capital investment cost and crop prices. Commodity prices impact decisions regarding enrollment into the Conservation Reserve Program and the Wetland Reserve Program; higher commodity prices can make conversion more profitable but low crop prices will make these programs more appealing economically. The Swampbuster provisions are effective in conserving wetlands if the economic penalties are significant to the individual farmer. The policy, legal and commodity variables were used to create models that explain the inter-relationship between agricultural economic factors, policy impacts and commodity prices. The models indicate how the variables could affect decision-making in determining whether to convert or conserve palustrine vegetated wetlands; increased commodity prices coupled with lower conservation program payments could jeopardize wetland conservation efforts and result in increased wetland loss rates due to increased wetland drainage and conversion.

Imported fire ants are invasive and cause injury to people, crops, livestock and wildlife. Disturbance may increase abundance and activity of fire ants. However, native grass field buffers established for grassland birds require periodic disturbance. I experimentally tested if fire ant mound density and foraging activity changed after burning and disking in native grass buffers and examined relationships among fire ants, vegetation, and grassland bird and butterfly metrics in undisturbed buffers. In 2008, disking increased mound density and foraging activity, but burning did not. In 2009, disking had no effect, but effects of disking the previous season persisted. Fire ant metrics were not related generally to bird or butterfly metrics. Mound density and foraging activity were related negatively to grass cover and related positively to forbs. Burning had less influence on abundance and activity of fire ants, and may better conserve grassland habitats in areas with fire ants.

United States Department of Agriculture’s Farm Bill conservation programs provide landowner incentives to remove less productive and environmentally sensitive lands from agricultural production and re-establish them in natural vegetation to achieve conservation objectives. However, removal of arable land from production imposes an opportunity cost associated with loss in revenue from commodities that otherwise would have been produced. The Habitat Buffers for Upland Birds practice (CP-33) under the Continuous Conservation Reserve Program is a targeted conservation practice designed to increase northern bobwhite populations in agricultural landscapes. However, establishing CP-33 buffers on profitable farmland may be incompatible with economic objectives of landowners. To determine how CP-33 enrollment influenced field profitability and bobwhite abundance; I simulated CP-33 buffers on crop fields across a range of commodity prices and modeled profitability and predicted bobwhite abundance. CP-33 increased field revenue on a percentage of fields at all commodity prices and increased bobwhite abundance up to 30%.