Dr. Maggie Douglas, Environmental Studies/Science
Soil Health at the College Farm
My goal in attending the Valley & Ridge workshop was to further develop ENST 345: Agroecology, specifically to deepen student understanding of environmental sustainability and its assessment in an agricultural context. Long-term performance is central to the concept of sustainability yet is challenging to study in the confines of a 14-week semester. To broaden the time horizon of the course, I collaborated with my colleague Dr. Denise Finney (Ursinus College) to revise the lab portion so the data students collect will ultimately contribute to a longitudinal study of soil health at the Dickinson College Farm. We designed the sampling strategy to cross a gradient of land management practices to both represent the farm as a whole and enable students to make interesting comparisons within each year of data. Through a series of directed lab exercises, students will gain hands-on experience measuring a range of soil indicators, building skills in key methodologies while considering the different time scales of processes integral to agricultural production. For example, we will assess indicators that change over the scale of months (insect activity-density), years (soil organic matter), and hundreds of years (soil texture), and discuss the implications of these dynamics for land management. As the course is repeatedly offered, we will assemble a dataset that allows students to examine change in the system over time. Furthermore, students will have the opportunity to practice stakeholder-engaged research through substantive interaction with Dickinson Farm staff. While the central focus of the project is environmental sustainability, these revised activities will also complement lecture material related to social dimensions of sustainability, particularly intergenerational justice.