Location: Delta Water Management Research
Project Number: 6024-13000-004-089-I
Project Type: Interagency Reimbursable Agreement
Start Date: Dec 15, 2024
End Date: Dec 14, 2027
Objective:
Contribute to the Inflation Reduction Act understanding of greenhouse gas emissions through the measurement of greenhouse gas emissions from on-farm storage reservoirs used for irrigation to inform models.
Approach:
The main purpose of this funding is to measure greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from on-farm reservoirs and to collect auxiliary data for the development and evaluation of GHG emission processes related to freshwater within the NRCS-supported multi-scale agroecosystems APEX/SWAT.This effort aims to improve the quantification of indirect GHG emissions for inventory enhancement and to compare these emissions with contributions from other land uses. Currently, the released versions of APEX/SWAT do not include GHG emission processes from freshwater, and modeling these emissions is challenging due to limited or insufficient field measurement data. Key measurements and auxiliary data are essential for understanding GHG emissions and their interrelationships with various processes and environmental variables in model development. This work supports the agency’s climate activities related to the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which aims to enhance understanding and measurement of the climate impacts of conservation and management practices, as well as improve estimates of carbon sequestration and GHG emissions.
Field measurements will be conducted at the CEAP watershed in Arkansas, which currently irrigates the third largest land area of any state in the U.S.. The Mississippi River Valley Alluvial Aquifer, has experienced declining water levels due to over-pumping of farm wells and limited aquifer recharge caused by the area's geology. In recent decades, the development of on-farm reservoirs has emerged as a strategy to encourage the use of surface water instead of declining groundwater supplies. Storing surface water during the winter and spring for subsequent use has proven beneficial for water resources in regions facing significant groundwater decline, such as eastern Arkansas and western Mississippi.