The resilience of a landscape to stressors, such as weather or ecological changes, is essential to preserving its ability to function, whether it be for agricultural, recreational, or other uses.

In a world that is expected to continue to increase agricultural yields to meet the needs of global food security, it is especially important to understand how to keep landscapes from reaching the threshold of becoming unusable.

Scientists in the Center for Resilience in Agricultural Working Landscapes (CRAWL) at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln study these interconnected systems in interdisciplinary teams, using cutting-edge technology.

Craig Allen, professor in the School of Natural Resources and director of CRAWL, and Dan Uden, assistant professor in the School of Natural Resources and the Department of Agronomy and Horticulture at the university, are two resilience scientists working to build CRAWL to preserve the productivity of landscapes in Nebraska and beyond .

“A resilience scientist sees the world in terms of systems and the disturbances that those systems experience," Uden said. “And resilience scientists work to understand and anticipate those disturbances and their impacts.”

Research conducted in CRAWL focuses on how agricultural landscapes respond to stressors such as weather (drought, hail, damaging winds, etc.) and ecological changes (such as invasive species), as well as social pressures and economic drivers.

“Nature does not exist in isolation anymore,” Allen said. “There is an important human linkage that must be considered this type of research.”

Resilience – Not Just a Buzzword

The term “resilience” is one that many people have likely heard, but within resilience research, Uden said there is a more specific definition.

“Resilience refers to a system and the level of disturbance that system can experience before it starts functioning in a fundamentally different way,” Uden said.

Research on resilience can be done for many different types of systems. The human body, for example, is one system that experiences and reacts to stressors. CRAWL, however, focuses specifically on landscape resilience.

“Food, fiber, fuel, and feed – those are things that we get from landscapes and from ecosystems,” Uden said.

Landscapes provide essentials not only for the lives of humans and other animals, but also for recreational spaces and even opportunities to combat the severity of climate change.

Therefore, it is essential to understand these complex systems and how they respond to stress so that potential interventions can be developed to keep landscapes functional.

Resilience in Nebraska

Nebraska is a beneficial location for CRAWL because it provides connections with experts on the many facets of agricultural landscapes, as well as access to a state that has a wealth of different types of important landscape systems.

"Many states focus on either row crop agriculture or grazing and beef production,” Allen said. “Nebraska does both and sometimes in an integrated way, making it an ideal location to study these landscapes.”

Some people may view Nebraska as a homogenous landscape, potentially making it lackluster to study, but Allen said that is not the case. There are many differences in elevation, amount of precipitation, types of soil, and water access across the state, for example, providing multiple areas of study.

“This variety in the landscape really gives us a great variety of situations to explore,” Allen said.

Understanding the resilience of Nebraska’s landscapes can inform land management practices that can ultimately increase the resilience of those landscapes to stressors. This ensures the land will support future generations.

"We need landscapes to be multifunctional, not just to be functional,” Uden said. “It is in our best interest to think about the resilience of landscapes, because landscapes experience all sorts of stressors.”

Interdisciplinarity is Key

Studying the resilience of a landscape requires taking into consideration all elements present in that landscape, as well as the different way in which it can be viewed.

“Complex systems are constantly changing and are comprised of human elements, social elements, ecological elements, economic elements, and infrastructure elements,” Allen said.

This complexity makes it vital for resilience scientists to form highly interdisciplinary teams. CRAWL has a wide range of expertise, and its faculty are regularly looking for new ways to build connections with experts in other disciplines.

For example, Gwendwr Meredith, who specializes in socio-ecological research, and Liz VanWormer, the coordinator of Nebraska One Health, as well as many graduate researchers also work within or with CRAWL.

Creative approaches to finding new collaborators have value for this research. One way is to talk with students to learn about their interests as well as what other advisors and professors they are working with. This can lead to collaboration with faculty that have expertise in other fields, Uden said.

Ultimately, CRAWL has been successful by bringing together multiple perspectives and expertise, including from both faculty and students .

To learn more about resilience and the research being done by CRAWL, visit https://centerforresilience.unl.edu/ and sign up for the newsletter https://centerforresilience.unl.edu/newsletters.

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Key Takeaways

1. The Center for Resilience in Agricultural Working Landscapes (CRAWL) was established to study the resilience of Nebraska landscapes important for food security, producing fiber and fuel, and for recreational uses.
2. In a world that is expected to continue to increase agricultural yields to meet the needs of global food security, it is especially important to understand how to keep landscapes from reaching the threshold of becoming unusable.
3. Research conducted in CRAWL focuses on how agricultural landscapes respond to stressors such as weather (drought, hail, damaging winds, etc.) and ecological changes (such as invasive species), as well as social pressures and economic drivers.
4. Interdisciplinary teams are a pillar of resilience research because they take into consideration all the elements present in that landscape.

To learn more about resilience and the research being done by CRAWL, visit https://centerforresilience.unl.edu/.