Cover Crops and Ecosystem Services: Insights from Studies in Temperate Soils

2449 Enhancing ecosystem services of current cropping systems is a priority for sustaining crop and livestock production, developing biofuel industries, and maintaining or improving soil and environmental quality. Integrating CCs with existing cropping systems has the potential to enhance ecosystem services such as: (i) food, feed, fi ber, and fuel production, (ii) C and other nutrient and water cycling, and (iii) soil, water, and air quality improvement. Th is is particularly important with increased concerns about the following challenges to agriculture: high production costs, environmental degradation, food security, and climate change. According to the Soil Science Society of America Glossary of Terms, CCs are defi ned as a “close-growing crop that provides soil protection, seeding protection, and soil improvement between periods of normal crop production, or between trees in orchards and vines in vineyards. When plowed under and incorporated into the soil, CCs may be referred to as green manure crops” (SSSA, 2008). While the use of CCs is not a new concept, the implications of their re-emerging importance and impacts on ecosystem services such as crop and livestock production and soil and environmental quality deserve further discussion. Historically, CCs have been used to meet a few specifi c needs (i.e., soil conservation, N2 fi xation, and weed and pest management), but now CC management questions increasingly revolve around the potential multi-functionality of CCs including soil C sequestration, mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions, benefi ts to “soil health,” feed for livestock, biofuel production, farm economics, and others. Th ere are many studies on CCs assessing soil and crop production, but few have attempted to discuss or integrate all the multiple ecosystem services that CCs provide (Dabney et al., 2001; Snapp et al., 2005). Th us, a summarization of the existing knowledge about potential multiple CC benefi ts is needed for a broader understanding of CC impacts on soil and agricultural production and identifi cation of knowledge gaps that deserve further research. Th is summarization will help answer the following question: Can CCs provide multiple ecosystem services to address the current challenges in soil and environmental quality, crop and livestock production, biofuel production, among others? review & interpretation