MacDougall’s team examined how converting less productive farmland into native prairie ecosystems can increase the variety of plant and animal life, improve soil quality, and support sustainable farming. Working with ALUS Canada farms, MacDougall’s team showed that these restored areas can enhance natural benefits like carbon storage and nutrient filtering while remaining agriculturally productive.
Human activities, particularly habitat destruction and intensive farming practices, are causing significant declines in the diversity of life in soils, waterways, and on land. Natural areas near farmland provide vital services for maintaining biodiversity, storing carbon, and filtering nutrients. However, we don’t fully understand how these natural systems continue providing these benefits while under pressure from human activities. To make farming more sustainable, we need to better understand how different management practices affect these natural services and how to promote practices that support essential functions like nutrient cycling, carbon storage, and soil health.
Dr. Andrew MacDougall’s team investigated how managing less productive farmland can support both agricultural production and environmental sustainability – goals farmers often see as conflicting. Working with ALUS Canada farms across Ontario, the team studied how marginal areas (land that’s expensive to farm or unsuitable for crops) can be transformed into diverse native prairie ecosystems that provide environmental benefits while remaining agriculturally productive. Converting these areas back to natural prairie offers multiple advantages: fewer crop losses from pests, better filtering of groundwater, increased carbon storage through prairie plant roots, and more diverse pollinator populations. The research focused on three main goals: studying how well these areas reduce nitrogen and phosphorus in groundwater, examining how climate change affects crop stability, and expanding sustainable practices to more farms.
Through collaborative field studies, MacDougall’s team developed and tested best practices for maintaining grassland biodiversity and ecosystem services, measuring their effectiveness through detailed research. The team examined how different farming practices – including tilling, fertilizing, grazing, protecting marginal land, and planting cover crops – affect the environment and farm productivity. For example, the research revealed that converting less productive areas to natural ecosystems effectively increases soil carbon storage. While farmers often spend money trying to improve these underperforming areas, showing the financial value of carbon storage could encourage them to restore these spaces instead. Another study found that nitrogen fertilizer improved soil nitrogen levels only when grazing animals were present, showing how local wildlife can help promote biodiversity through their effects on nutrient cycling and plant growth.
MacDougall team showed how small changes on small pieces of land can significantly improve biodiversity in soils and wildlife. The “marginal land model” offers a promising way to balance food production with environmental protection, particularly important given predicted declines in species diversity and increasing climate change impacts. While many farmers and conservationists already use some of these practices, their full effects aren’t well understood or widely implemented yet. This research clarifies which practices benefit biodiversity and why, helping shape policies and improve land management practices that support, rather than harm, neighboring ecosystems.
Anderson, T. M., Griffith, D. M., Grace, J. B., Lind, E. M., Adler, P. B., Biedermann, L., Blumenthal, D. M., Daleo, P., Firn, J., Hagenah, N., Harpole, W. S., MacDougall, A. S., McCulley, R. L., Prober, S. M., Risch, A. C., Sankaran, M., Schutz, M., Seabloom, E. W., Stevens, C., … Borer, E. T. (2018). Herbivory and eutrophication mediate grassland plant nutrient responses across a global climatic gradient. Ecology, 99(4), 822–831. https://doi.org/10.1002/ecy.2175
Carroll, O., Batzer, E., Bharath, S., Borer, E. T., Campana, S., Esch, E., … & MacDougall, A. S. (2022). Nutrient identity modifies the destabilising effects of eutrophication in grasslands. Ecology Letters, 25(4), 754-765.
Chen, Q., Wang, S., Seabloom, E. W., MacDougall, A. S., Borer, E. T., Bakker, J. D., … & Hautier, Y. (2022). Nutrients and herbivores impact grassland stability across spatial scales through different pathways. Global change biology, 28(8), 2678-2688.
Dolezal, A. J., Esch, E. H., & MacDougall, A. S. (2022). Restored marginal farmland benefits arthropod diversity at multiple scales. Restoration Ecology, 30(1), e13485.
Gill, A. L., Adler, P. B., Borer, E. T., Buyarski, C. R., Cleland, E. E., D’Antonio, C. M., … & Hobbie, S. E. (2022). Nitrogen increases early‐stage and slows late‐stage decomposition across diverse grasslands. Journal of Ecology, 110(6), 1376-1389.
Harvey, E., & MacDougall, A. S. (2018). Non-interacting impacts of fertilization and habitat area on plant diversity via contrasting assembly mechanisms. Diversity and Distributions, 24(4), 509–520. https://doi.org/10.1111/ddi.12697
Hautier, Y., Isbell, F., Borer, E. T., Seabloom, E. W., Harpole, W. S., Lind, E. M., MacDougall, A. S., Stevens, C., Adler, P. B., Alberti, J., Bakker, J. D., Brudvig, L. A., Buckley, Y. M., Cadotte, M., Caldeira, M., Chaneton, E. J., Chu, C., Daleo, P., Dickman, C. R., … Hector, A. (2018). Local loss and spatial homogenization of plant diversity reduce ecosystem multifunctionality. Nature Ecology and Evolution, 2, 50–56. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-017-0395-0
Hodapp, D., Borer, E. T., Harpole, W. S., Lind, E. M., Seabloom, E. W., Adler, P. B., Alberti, J., Arnillas, C. A., Bakker, J. D., Biedermann, L., Cadotte, M., Cleland, E. E., Collins, S., Fay, P. A., Firn, J., Hagenah, N., Hautier, Y., Iribarne, O., Knops, J. M. H., … Hillebrand, H. (2018). Spatial heterogeneity in species composition constrains plant community responses to herbivory and fertilisation. Ecology Letters, 21, 1364–1371. https://doi.org/10.1111/ele.13102
MacDougall, A. S., McCune, J. L., Eriksson, O., Cousins, S. A. O., Partel, M., Firn, J., & Hierro, J. L. (2018). The Neolithic plant invasion hypothesis: The role of preadaptation and disturbance in grassland invasion. New Phytologist, 220, 94–103. https://doi.org/10.1111/nph.15285
Mazzorato, A. (2019). Change happens from the ground up: Long-term prospects for soil carbon storage using targeted tallgrass prairie restorations in agroecosystems. University of Guelph. http://hdl.handle.net/10214/15208
McCann, K. S., Cazelles, K., MacDougall, A. S., Fussmann, G. F., Bieg, C., Cristescu, M., … & Gonzalez, A. (2021). Landscape modification and nutrient‐driven instability at a distance. Ecology Letters, 24(3), 398-414.
Noble, D. T., MacDougall, A. S., & Levison, J. (2023). Impacts of soil, climate, and phenology on retention of dissolved agricultural nutrients by permanent-cover buffers. Science of the Total Environment, 860, 160532.
Price, J. N., Sitters, J., Ohlert, T., Tognetti, P. M., Brown, C. S., Seabloom, E. W., … & Wardle, G. M. (2022). Evolutionary history of grazing and resources determine herbivore exclusion effects on plant diversity. Nature Ecology & Evolution, 6(9), 1290-1298.
Rocci, K. S., Barker, K. S., Seabloom, E. W., Borer, E. T., Hobbie, S. E., Bakker, J. D., … & Cotrufo, M. F. (2022). Impacts of nutrient addition on soil carbon and nitrogen stoichiometry and stability in globally-distributed grasslands. Biogeochemistry, 159(3), 353-370.
Seabloom, E. W., Borer, E. T., Hobbie, S. E., & MacDougall, A. S. (2021). Soil nutrients increase long‐term soil carbon gains threefold on retired farmland. Global Change Biology, 27(19), 4909-4920.
Radujković, D., Verbruggen, E., Seabloom, E. W., Bahn, M., Biederman, L. A., Borer, E. T., … & Vicca, S. (2021). Soil properties as key predictors of global grassland production: Have we overlooked micronutrients?. Ecology letters, 24(12), 2713-2725.
Dr. Hafiz Maherali, Dr. Kari Dunfield, Dr. Jana Levison, Dr. Amy Newman, Dr. Brian Husband, Dr. Christina Caruso, Dr. Caroline Kamm
Ally Dolezal, Ollie Carroll, Dan Noble, Annalisa Mazzorato, Matt Pavusa, Bernal Arce, Mehra Balsara, Sam Somerville, Rory Wills, Laura Davies, Akeem Bello, Lake Elmhurst, Lorraine Vandermyden, Brynn Varcoe, Kevin McColl, Annika Wilcox, Dr. Ellen Esch
Ducks Unlimited, ALUS Canada
