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PhD Student, Lin Liu, work is highlighted by ESPP

July 11, 2018 - ESPP

Article from MSU's Environmental Science & Policy Program

KEEPING CROPS PRODUCTIVE IN TIMES OF DROUGHT, HEAT AND FLOODS

Editor’s note: This is the fifth in  a series of articles highlighting the summer research activities of Michigan State University doctoral students, funded in part by ESPP’s Summer Research Fellowship program. To learn more about the program, go to http://www.espp.msu.edu/research/Summer_fellowship_2018-final2.pdf

Lin Liu is a dual major PhD candidate in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences and Environmental Science and Policy (ESPP) under the supervision of Bruno Basso. This summer, she is researching crop productivity in the state of Michigan in relation to the Food-Energy-Water nexus . Since the Midwest has seen a dramatic increase in drought periods, heat stresses, and flooding, Liu believes it is vitally important to understand how these extreme weather events will affect fertilizer and irrigation requirements as well as water quality and quantity.

During her research this summer, she is going to use the SALUS (the Systems Approach to Land Use Sustainability) crop model to understand how and why these changes occur.  According to the Basso lab, “The SALUS (System Approach to Land Use Sustainability) program is designed to model continuous crop, soil, water and nutrient conditions under different management strategies for multiple years. These strategies may have various crop rotations, planting dates, plant populations, irrigation and fertilizer applications, and tillage regimes. The program will simulate plant growth and soil conditions every day (during growing seasons and fallow periods) for any time period when weather sequences are available.”

Another major part of her research is collecting historical long-term weather data from the Global Historical Climatology Network and analyzing extreme weather events, specifically droughts and heat stresses, and how they affect different parts of the growing season.

SALUS will also be used to simulate changes in precipitation to evaluate the effect on grain yield, nitrate leaching, energy cost, and water use, according to Liu.

 Photo of LinL

Lin Liu (Earth and Environmental Sciences; Environmental Science and Policy) is researching crop productivity in the state of Michigan.