Projects

Iowa Woodland Invasive Species Inventory

Invasive plant species are plants that are not native to an ecosystem and potentially cause economic or environmental damage to the area.

The North Central Regional Aquaculture Center (NCRAC) is one of the five Regional Aquaculture Centers established by Congress that are administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service. NCRAC is an administrative unit that serves the twelve states in the North Central Region: Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin.

Landscape Ecology and Sustainable Ecosystem Management Lab

Our research investigates the causes, patterns, consequences, and design of landscape and land-use change. Through this research, we attempt to uncover the means to maintain or enhance ecosystem resilience over multiple spatial scales and over the long term. We expect that resilient ecosystems will continue to provide the range of goods and services on which humanity ultimately depends--such as crops, timber, clean water, and outdoor recreational opportunities.

The Iowa DNR has been involved in long-term species and habitat restoration programs, and evaluating these efforts is important to the DNR. Iowa is bordered on the west by the Missouri River and on the east by the Mississippi River, and numerous native and restored wetlands occur in the northwest. These ecosystems and the resulting production and migration of waterfowl and other migratory birds are of importance to the cooperators. View website

STRIPS

Strategically integrating small amounts of perennial vegetation (in our case, reconstructed prairie) within row-cropped watersheds offers the opportunity to enhance the health and diversity of Midwestern agricultural landscapes. This project will explore this hypothesis through an integrated watershed-scale approach that uses field experimentation, spatial models, and tradeoff assessments to quantify changes in ecological functioning and economic outputs resulting from different configurations of perennial and annual plants. Integral to the project is the effective communication of project results to catalyze further tests of this practice on the landscape.

Applied Geomorphology Lab

The Applied Geomorphology lab is part of the Department of Natural Resource Ecology & Management at Iowa State University. We study earth surface processes, the evolution of landscapes through these processes, and the impacts of management on process and form. We work in fluvial, glacial, and hillslope settings using various combinations of fieldwork, geospatial analysis, modeling and laboratory experiments.

Aquatic Research Campus Facility

Laboratories are located in the basement of Science II (rooms 02, 10, and 12)
Walleye and Hybrid Walleye, Hybrid Striped Bass, Bluegill and Hybrid Bluegill, Rainbow Trout, Yellow Perch, and Largemouth Bass.

Cattle grazing in Conservation Reserve Program grasslands

Researchers at Iowa State University, in coordination with the Farm Services Agency, are looking to understand how cattle grazing may impact environmental outcomes on land enrolled in the Conservation Reserve Program. The study started in 2024 and will continue until 2028.

ECOS

This project encompasses a large scale experiment in Costa Rica, laboratory experiments in Iowa, and modeling with CENTURY. We explore how tropical tree species influence ecosystem processes. The focus currently is on carbon and nutrient cycling, microbial processes, ecosystem modeling, and restoration of degraded landscapes.

Iowa State University Aquatic Research Facility

The Department of Natural Resource Ecology and Management has built an Aquatic Research Facility at an ISU farm north of Ames. The ponds are now in use to support fisheries and aquatic research in the Department.

We study People, Land Use and Society (PLUS). The PLUS lab is directed by Dr. John Tyndall, a natural resource economist and social scientist with broad interests in environmental and natural resource economics, policy and sociology within forestry and agriculture.

Publications

To see the scholarly work done by the Department of Natural Resource Ecology and Management:

Visit the Iowa State University Digital Repository

Click on a person and then their Google Scholar link

Look at Department of Natural Resource Ecology and Management theses and dissertations

Roe Lab - Freshwater Mollusks, Fishes, and shrimps

To date my research in my lab has focused on freshwater mollusks, fishes, and shrimps. I have two major areas of interest, I use phylogenetic methods to understand the evolution of organisms and their distributions, and population genetic tools to aid in conservation of rare species. Because many freshwater organisms are affected by anthropogenic impacts on water quality and availability, much of the work in my lab has involved endangered species.

Vegetative Environmental Buffers

Vegetative Environmental Buffers (VEBs) are an odor mitigation technology that have been drawing a lot of attention in Iowa and in other livestock and poultry producing states. VEBs are rows of trees and shrubs purposefully planted in and around livestock and poultry facilities. VEB is a technical term for shelterbelts and windbreaks that are being used specifically for odor mitigation. Research suggests that strategically placed VEBs can play an important incremental role in bio-physically and socio-psychologically mitigating odor in an economically feasible way.

Wildlife conservation in working landscapes

Wildlife are impacted by every decision we make on the land. Our research seeks to help find opportunities for wildlife and water to thrive alongside sustainable and profitable farming enterprises.