Lesson 4 – Integrating Habitat into Croplands: Prairie Strips and Bird Conservation

 

Presentation Recording

Presenters

Matt Stephenson is the Data Management Specialist for the Regenerative Agriculture program at ISU’s Bioeconomy Institute. At BEI, Matt developed SILPH, a PostgreSQL database hosted on MS Azure that serves as a data warehouse for agricultural, environmental, economic, and engineering data and metadata. His everyday responsibilities include assisting researchers on multiple large trans-disciplinary grants with data management plans, metadata development, and data storage, transfer, and publication. Prior to joining BEI, Matt earned a PhD in Wildlife Ecology at ISU in 2022 studying bird, snake, and mammal habitat quality on farms and prairies for the prairie STRIPS project. He started down his path to an ISU degree hat-trick when he completed his bachelors’ degree in Animal Ecology at ISU in 2010. Together with his wife and two children, he has the goal of visiting every National Park.

Jordan Giese is an Assistant Professor of Research in the Caesar Kleberg Wildlife Research Institute at Texas A&M University-Kingsville. He grew up in eastern Nebraska and has long been interested in the relationship between wildlife and agriculture. After graduating from the University of Nebraska, Jordan moved to Texas to pursue a M.S. in wildlife biology where his research focused on the nest ecology of White-tipped Doves along the U.S.-Mexico border. During his Ph.D. work at Iowa State University, he investigated the impacts of prairie restoration on grassland birds and other wildlife. After finishing his Ph.D. in 2023, he accepted his current position at CKWRI, where his work is focused on movements and energetics of waterbirds.

Learning Objectives

Upon successfully completing this lesson, participants will be able to:

• Examine conservation needs of farmland birds.
• Evaluate the effects of prairie strips on farmland birds.
• Review importance of habitat quality of on-farm conservation practices.
• Compare habitat quality of prairie strips to common practices and the best widely available practices.

Resources

• Bird community response to field-level integration of prairie by Giese et al.
• Prairie Strips and Songbirds Handout Iowa State University Handout
• Prairie Strips- Small changes, Big impacts Iowa State University R&E Resource
• Iowa State University Prairie Strip Page