Welcome to SAL Lab!

About Us

The Sustainable Agricultural Landscapes (SAL) Lab conducts scientific research that contributes to understanding the ecology of and management for an agricultural system that meets current needs without compromising the needs of future generations. While sustainable agriculture should ensure that numerous needs are met, including those that are social and economic in nature, the SAL Lab focuses specifically on those related to the environment.

Food, fiber and fuel production now dominates much of the terrestrial landscape, consequently altering the flow of nutrients and energy, the availability of clean water and amount of habitat available for dwindling global biodiversity. The SAL Lab seeks to provide a better understanding of these changes across a diversity of agroecosystems and social and economic contexts.

Our Focus

A major focus of the lab is to evaluate the multiple environmental impacts and ecological interactions for various agricultural management options. Among the many environmental outcomes of agricultural production, there are likely tradeoffs but also synergies. Many of these tradeoffs and synergies are best understood at the landscape scale. The SAL lab thus works to scale analyses from the plot and field to the landscape and beyond.