Katie Lewis, Ph.D., Texas A&M AgriLife Research, Lubbock

The goal of Dr. Lewis’s project is to intensify agricultural production in an environmentally sustainable way that strengthens agronomic, economic, and community resiliency across the southern Great Plains. By successfully integrating regenerative practices—such as livestock grazing, cover cropping, and conservation tillage—into cotton and wheat systems, this research is breaking new ground in a region where such approaches have seen limited application.

Graduate students focus on quantifying the environmental impacts of intensified regenerative agricultural practices, generating data that directly supports more sustainable land use. By employing unmanned aerial systems, the team is capturing high-resolution measurements that feed into the development of a first-of-its-kind decision support tool. Through advanced modeling and field validation, the team has shown that integrating regenerative practices can lead to measurable increases in organic carbon in soil, even in semi-arid, drought-prone regions like the southern Great Plains.

This project emphasizes comprehensive education, training, and outreach, targeting producers, stakeholders, and students. This includes on-farm demonstrations, regional conferences, field days, hands-on labs, virtual participation opportunities, and more.