College of Agriculture and Life Sciences
Engaging Students
Search for Chronic Disease Risk Factors in
Horses Leads to Clues about Prevention
Bringing New Life to an Eroding Stream
Value-added Soybeans to Save Money and Environment
Expanding the Learning Experience
Crossing Traditional Boundaries of Science
To Find Health Solutions
Hobby-size Planes May Be Future of
Early Warning System
Improving Local Economies Through Agritourism
Incentive Payments May Reduce Phosphorus Pollution
Protecting Milk’s Flavor and Nutritional Value
Finding a Healthful and Environmentally Friendly Use For Peanut Skins
Supporting Virginia’s Expanding Wine Industry
Virginia Tech Reaches Top 10 in Agricultural Research
Entrepreneurship Education Puts Business Owners in the Express Lane
E-learning Option for Place-bound Professionals
Financial Planning – From the Farm to the Household
New Graduate Program to Train Faculty in Agricultural Education Fields
Farmers’ Markets from Diverse Communities Benefit from Sharing
Families, Food, and Fun
Developing Disease-free Mosquitoes
Mites Make Right in Honduras – or Not?
Help for the Hippos of Zambia
Help for the Hippos of Zambia
|
Its name means “water horse,” apt for the hippopotamus, which spends most of its life in deep water holes. But in Zambia’s Luangwa River region, drought, deforestation, and farming are threatening the streams the hippos call home.
Using aerial and satellite images, rain gauges, and soil and water samples, Conrad Heatwole, associate professor of biological systems engineering, is studying how agriculture, commerce, and tourism affect the water supply and, in turn, the wildlife in Zambia’s South Luangwa National Park. Though satellite imagery has been used for decades to detect changes in land use, this region has not been studied in detail. “Assessing impacts is mostly educated guessing at this point,” Heatwole says. “One of my goals is to use field research on runoff and erosion to help provide reliable answers.”
Eastern Zambia has a natural weather pattern of dry years and rainy ones, so drought followed by flooding is common. Local farming practices have made the situation worse. As the population has grown, farmers have turned to the slashand- burn clearing of trees and planting their crops of corn, peanuts, and cotton in the ashes. This increases runoff, Heatwole says, carrying silt into the streams where the hippos live. As silt builds up, it makes the river shallower,
crowding the hippos into the remaining deep areas, where they are susceptible to disease, predators, and poachers.
Heatwole’s techniques also are being applied in the Andean region of Bolivia and Ecuador where poor practices in farming, grazing, and forestry are eroding the soil and threatening biodiversity on the steep slopes. Researchers there hope to use satellite and aerial images with vegetation, soil, water, and weather data to determine which areas most need protection and which are best suited for cultivation.
The projects in Africa and South America are among five long-term research activities of the Sustainable Agriculture and Natural Resource Management Collaborative Research Support Program, managed at Virginia Tech and funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development. On both continents, the goal is to increase food security and teach farmers how to make a living without threatening biodiversity and natural resources. In other words, what’s good for hippos also helps the people.