About Us:
Welcome to the STRIPs project! We are an interdisciplinary team of researchers, educators, and extension specialists studying the impacts of integrating small strips of prairie within row-cropped agricultural landscapes. STRIPs stands for Science-based Trials of Rowcrops Integrated with Prairies and our experiemental site is located at Neal Smith National Wildlife Refuge.
We encourage you to visit the links above to learn more about our project, current findings, and upcoming opportunities. Please tell us what you think!
While STRIPs results from the endeavors and support of many, we especially thank the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Neal Smith National Wildlife Refuge for their leading role in the project. Click the following links for a full list of project participants and partners.
What's New?
July 10: Our annual stakeholder meeting is scheduled for July 10th at Whiterock Conservancy near Coon Rapids, IA. Contact Matt Helmers (link: mhelmers@iastate.edu) for further information.
April 9th: Read our new news release on STRIPs here.
March 14th: The STRIPs team has published two new research articles in the journal Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems. Read about “Targeting perennial vegetation in agricultural landscapes for enhancing ecosystem services” and “Using biodiversity to link agricultural productivity with environmental quality: results from three field experiments in Iowa”.
March 4th: Come hear Matt Liebman (ISU scientist), Doug Davenport (NRCS District Conservationist), and Seth Watkins present on STRIPs at the Iowa Water Conference.
December 17th: The STRIPs team visits Seth Watkin’s farm in southwest Iowa. Seth is a private farmer and he will house the project’s first on-farm research and demonstration site.
November 16th: Graduate student Anna MacDonald successfully defends her Master’s research on prairie strips as bird habitat. Hear Anna speak about her work in this Leopold Center "On the Ground" video.