Promoting healthy watersheds through sustainable land management
Ian Mitchell-Innes, Holistic Management Educator and mob-grazing expert, held a workshop with Dixon Ranches staff, board of directors, and advisory board members at Mimms Unit in July. The South African rancher discussed grazing strategies, animal performance, and other topics.
You can learn more about many of the principles and practices he covered in this online presentation, Ranching in Sync with Nature:
Hardin-Simmons University researchers recently received a Dixon Water Foundation grant to explore how land management affects the subterranean world of soil microbes on a Runnels County ranch. Learn more in this article from Ballinger News and the video below from Abilene Fox affiliate KXVA. KRBC meteorologist Scott Cook also featured the research project on Abilene’s NBC affiliate.
ABILENE—Under every farm and ranch around Abilene, a universe of microorganisms is toiling in the soil. Hardin-Simmons University researchers recently received a Dixon Water Foundation grant to explore how land management affects this subterranean world on a Runnels County ranch.
Hardin-Simmons University students Karissa Olson, Isaiah Longoria, and Michael Flud collecting soil samples from the wildlife pasture at Newman Ranch. Photo by Marla Potess
“Our food, our water resources, and many other ecosystem services start with soil,” said Marla Potess, an HSU environmental science professor leading the research. “Over the last 100 years, we’ve been really hard on our soils. Even with good, scientifically based management, soils are degrading, and many ecosystems are moving from highly productive to less productive. So I’m very interested in managing soils to improve microbial biodiversity, which may impact water retention and plant biodiversity and productivity.”
In what they hope will become a long-term study, Potess and HSU biology professor Jennifer Hennigan are examining soil microorganisms on the Newman Ranch in Runnels County, about 40 miles south of Abilene. HSU professor emeritus and trustee George Newman invited the university to use his ranches as outdoor laboratories and created an endowment to fund research on his family property.
HSU environmental science students with professor emeritus Dr. George Newman by the weather station at Newman Ranch. Photo by Marla Potess
“For the past 40 years, as time and finances have allowed, I have been converting my cropland back into native grassland,” Newman said. “I feel that my philosophy of land stewardship closely mirrors that of the Dixon Water Foundation and I am very appreciative of their support for this program.”
The Newman Ranch study sites have the same soil type but have been managed very differently, Potess explained. For example, one site is a cultivated hay grazer field, while another is being restored to native prairie grasses. Potess and Hennigan are looking for differences in the soil microbial communities at each site, which they eventually hope to correlate with different management techniques used in each pasture.
HSU students have been actively involved in the research, collecting and analyzing soil samples and drafting research proposals related to the project. The Dixon Water Foundation grant will fund DNA sequencing that will provide a snapshot of the microbial diversity at each study site.
The Dixon Water Foundation grant will be used to analyze DNA from soil core samples collected earlier this year. Photo by Marla Potess
Ultimately this research could help farmers and ranchers better understand how their actions aboveground affect the microscopic world underground.
“The hypothesis is if soils have diverse, healthy microorganisms, they can hold more water,” Potess said. “And that has important implications for drought resistance for crops and restoring grasslands.”
Those implications helped attract support from the Dixon Water Foundation, which promotes healthy watersheds through sustainable land management. The foundation funds research and education projects tied to this mission and demonstrates sustainable grazing management on its four ranches in North and West Texas.
“We hope this research will help farmers and ranchers improve the economic productivity of their land by building healthier soils and healthier watersheds,” said Robert Potts, the foundation’s president and CEO.
North Texas Land Scholars is a five-day leadership camp that fosters a passion for land stewardship through hands-on activities like hunter safety, plant and insect collections, quail habitat analysis and dissections, and much more. A partner of the Dixon Water Foundation, UNT Quail created this program to encourage youth to become responsible leaders and land stewards, and ultimately to restore the ranch and wildlife legacy of Texas. The application deadline is July 1, and the 2015 camp runs July 26-31 at Camp Grady Spruce. Financial assistance is available, and scholarships are awarded during the camp. For more information and an application, visit the North Texas Land Scholars website.
“Ranchers can apply many of the same management approaches that work for land health and livestock production to prevent conflicts with large carnivores,” states Matt Barnes, field director for Keystone Conservation, in a new white paper that was funded in part by the Dixon Water Foundation.
“Modeling livestock management after the grazing patterns and reproductive cycles of wild ungulates in the presence of their predators can improve rangeland health and livestock production—and increase the ability of ranching operations to coexist with native carnivores,” continues Barnes in the paper’s abstract. “The central anti-predator behavior of wild grazing animals is to form large, dense herds that then move around the landscape to seek fresh forage, avoid fouled areas, and escape predators. They also have their young in short, synchronized birthing seasons (predator satiation). Grazing management involving high stocking density and frequent movement, such as rotational grazing and herding with lowstress livestock handling, can improve rangeland health and livestock production, by managing the distribution of grazing across time, space, and plant species. Short calving seasons can increase livestock production and reduce labor inputs, especially when timed to coincide with peak availability of forage quality. Such livestock management approaches based on antipredator behaviors of wild ungulates may directly and synergistically reduce predation risk— while simultaneously establishing a management context in which other predation-prevention practices and tools can be used more effectively.”
The full white paper, “Livestock Management for Coexistence with Large Carnivores, Healthy Land and Productive Ranches,” is available as a PDF on Keystone Conservation’s website: http://www.keystoneconservation.us/PDFs/KeystoneConservation_2015_WhitePaper.pdf
Keystone Conservation has developed several other resources for range managers about how grazing management can prevent conflict with large carnivores, while improving land health. The organization recently consolidated with People and Carnivores.
Patrick Holden, director of the Sustainable Food Trust and former director of the Soil Association, explains how Holistic Management and regenerative agriculture can heal many of society’s problems in this video interview from the Savory Institute. Holden is a dairyman in the UK raising heritage breed cows and producing some of the finest raw milk cheese in the world.
A new PBS documentary, “The First Millimeter: Healing the Earth,” explains why the first millimeter of soil is critical to our collective future. Several Holistic Management practitioners from around the world share the practices they use to build healthy soils and vibrant communities.
A Texas Riparian and Stream Ecosystem Workshop in the Hickory Creek Watershed will be held on May 21 in Denton. The training will focus on the nature and function of stream and riparian zones and the benefits and direct impacts from healthy riparian zones. This workshop is supported in part by a grant from the Dixon Water Foundation and is being co-hosted by the City of Denton and the Upper Trinity Conservation Trust. Learn more about this program and similar riparian workshops on the Texas Riparian Association’s website. RSVP required by May 15.
Colin McDonald recently finished his Disappearing Rio Grande expedition, during which he spent seven months traveling 1,900 miles from the river’s headwaters to its mouth. Along the way, he documented the river’s condition, the lives of people who depend on it, and efforts to conserve it. One of his stops last fall was Dixon Ranches Mimms Unit, where he visited with President and CEO Robert Potts. To honor the end of the project, we wanted to share again the article McDonald wrote for the Texas Tribune about how our ranch is decreasing the amount of sediment and increasing flows in the Rio Grande.
The Dixon Water Foundation was honored with a Texas Environmental Excellence Award in Agriculture at the TCEQ’s Environmental Trade Fair and Conference in Austin last week. Ranch manager Casey Wade and board member Leslie Rauscher were on hand to accept the award. TCEQ produced this video about the foundation’s work for the ceremony:
