07/28/1993

Forage Ecologist Establishing Diverse Research Program

AUBURN, Ala. - Exploring solutions to practical problems relating to forage production and management is the focus of research being conducted by Mary S. Miller, a newly appointed faculty member in Auburn's Department of Agronomy and Soils.

Miller, who comes to Auburn from a post-doctoral position at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, joined the Auburn faculty in January as assistant professor of forage ecology. Since her arrival, she has initiated a variety of studies that will help merge Auburn's forage breeding and grazing management programs and also address problems relating to the ecological and physiological responses of forages to stresses caused by weather, soil conditions, animals, and humans.

Miller received her bachelor's and master's degrees in agronomy from Louisiana State University and a doctorate in range science from Colorado State University. She was a member of the range and forage faculty at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln from 1990 until her arrival at Auburn. Her position at Auburn includes teaching in the College of Agriculture and research responsibilities in the Alabama Agricultural Experiment Station.

Miller's position was established to meet some specific needs of Alabama agriculture. Alabama has more acres of forages than any other agronomic crop and the State has the potential to be a leader in forage-livestock production. Auburn already has productive forage breeding and grazing management research efforts. However, to make the leap from development of new varieties to utilization of these varieties, more information is needed on how forages interact with other plant species and react to various environmental pressures both during and after establishment.

"Through numerous visits with colleagues, Extension specialists, Experiment Station support staff, SCS personnel, and producers throughout the state, we have identified several important areas of research," Miller said.

"Among these will be establishment and persistence problems relating to currently used introduced forage species and promising native grass varieties," she continued. Her studies in this area will address such issues as seedling development and demographics of native warm-season grasses, the effect of height and cutting frequency on various warm-season species, and establishment and persistence of native warm-season grasses in Alabama's Black Belt region.

Research in plant-soil relationships will address such issues as bahiagrass and bermudagrass plant-soil responses to poultry litter versus commercial fertilizer as nutrient sources, seedling root development and mycorrhizal infection in tall fescue seedlings on soils with varied fertility status, cotton nematode and soil water content as influenced by various annual winter forages under grazed conditions, nitrogen fixations by free-living organisms associated with switchgrass, and tillage system effects on the canopy of cover crops, such as crimson clover.

According to Miller, interactions between the forage species produced and grazing management can have an impact on riparian zones, which are areas near the banks of waterways, and also on water quality. She hopes to assess this impact, and has already taken the first step in that effort by developing a survey of livestock owners relative to their perceptions and practices for grazing management in riparian zones. She also is designing studies that will look at what effect excluding cattle from riparian areas has on vegetation and soil characteristics in these zones. She also is working with an interdisciplinary research team to design studies to examine the use of constructed vegetative buffer strips to mitigate sediment loss from grazed watersheds and how hydrologic functions on pasture lands are influenced by different forage-soil combinations.

In addition to her research efforts, Miller teaches undergraduate courses in crop production and a graduate level course in crop ecology.

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Auburn, AL 36849
334-844-4877 (PHONE) 334-844-5892 (FAX)

Contact Jamie Creamer, 334-844-2783 or jcreamer@auburn.edu
Contact Katie Jackson, 334-844-5886 or smithcl@auburn.edu

July 28, 1993