Description

The Russell Ranch Sustainable Agriculture Facility is a unique 300-acre facility near the UC Davis campus dedicated to investigating irrigated and dry-land agriculture in a Mediterranean climate. It’s also a unit of the Agricultural Sustainability Institute (ASI).

Among Russell Ranch’s ongoing experiments is a 100-year study referred to as Long Term Research in Agricultural Sustainability (LTRAS), which is comprised of 72 one-acre plots. LTRAS is an exploration of the long-term impacts of crop rotation, farming systems (conventional, organic and mixed) and inputs of water, nitrogen, carbon and other elements on agricultural sustainability. Sustainability is indicated by long-term trends in yield, profitability, resource-use efficiency (such as water or energy) and environmental impacts.

LTRAS has monitored changes in crop and soil properties, greenhouse gas emissions, weed ecology and economic indicators since 1993. The Sustainable Agriculture Farming Systems (SAFS) project joined with LTRAS in 2003. Russell Ranch is primarily a research facility and also supports UC Davis' extension and teaching missions by hosting field days, class field trips, undergraduate interns and graduate student research.

The NASA's JPL set up towers in 2015 to collect in situ data. The in situ data collected can be seen on the measurements tab of this page. This in situ data is going to be used in coordination with the flight projects for vegetation at JPL and will help track the climate change effect on the nations agriculture.

More information about the previous research and the facility please go to ASI's Russell Ranch Home Page.