Location: National Soil Erosion Research Laboratory
Project Number: 5020-12000-016-000-D
Project Type: In-House Appropriated
Start Date: Oct 9, 2018
End Date: Oct 8, 2023
Objective:
Objective 1: Develop strategies to mitigate landscape scale attributes for improved soil and water quality and production efficiency.
Sub-objective 1.1 Explore surface and subsurface hydrologic processes affecting soil quality and vulnerability on tile-drained landscape.
Sub-objective 1.2 Evaluate sources and flow pathways of water and nutrients in tile-drained landscapes.
Objective 2: Improve nutrient management efficiency to minimize water quality degradation and maximize agricultural production.
Sub-objective 2.1 Assess the influence of combined conservation practices on soil organic matter transformations, nutrient cycling, and crop yield.
Sub-objective 2.2 Evaluate soil P drawdown rates, plant phosphorus uptake, and potential changes in corn and soybean yield with elimination of phosphorus fertilizer to long-term fertility research plots.
Sub-objective 2.3 Determine the critical phosphorus concentration for corn and soybean cultivars common to the Midwest using the Genetics X Environment X Management (GxExM) approach.
Sub-objective 2.4 Evaluate quantity/intensity relationships and the kinetics of phosphorus release in diverse soils in working towards the long-term goal of improving soil fertility recommendations.
Objective 3: Develop and refine decision support tools.
Sub-objective 3.1 Develop software and database architectures to support collecting and managing observed natural resource data.
Sub-objective 3.2 Develop decision support tools to explore and integrate observed field and small watershed data with spatial models.
Sub-objective 3.3 Test and improve tools for assessment of climate change impacts on model predictions of soil erosion and chemical losses.
Objective 4: Operate and maintain the Eastern Corn Belt LTAR network site in partnership with the Soil Drainage Research Unit, Columbus, OH and the National Center for Water Quality Research, Heidelberg University, Tiffin, OH using technologies and practices agreed upon by the LTAR leadership. Contribute to the LTAR working groups and common experiments as resources allow. Submit relevant data with appropriate metadata to the LTAR Information Ecosystem.
Sub-objective 4.1 Develop water, nitrogen, and phosphorus budgets for agricultural fields under prevailing management practices in the Eastern Corn Belt.
Subobjective 4.2. Evaluate relationships between soil and water quality, and greenhouse gas emissions under different cropping and management scenarios in the Eastern Corn Belt.
Approach:
Objective 1: Both laboratory and field studies will be used to gain a better understanding of the hydrologic processes that control erosion at various locations in the landscape and assess sources and flow pathways of nutrients and water to streams. This will involve assessing the effect of subsurface tile drains on in-stream variability of nutrient concentration and isotopic signatures. Indoor rainfall simulation tools and a stream survey will be utilized to accomplish the listed objective.
Objective 2: Regarding soil quality and phosphorus fertilizer recommendations, laboratory and field experiments will be used. Current long-term field experiments where various crop rotations and best management practices have been implemented will provide soils for detailed laboratory analysis to assess the impact of the given practices on soil quality. For phosphorus fertilizer recommendations, the approach is to construct a controlled indoor growth facility and evaluate phosphorus uptake by various crop cultivars, followed by a detailed experiment on quantifying the ability of soil to supply dissolved phosphorus to solutions using long term incubations and various types of extraction methods.
Objective 3: Computer programs will be developed for automation of uploading environmental data into the proper format for use by several models, as well as convert to specified data formats, and help interpret validation data from model simulations. This includes incorporation of various future climate scenarios into different models.
Objective 4: Discharge, water quality data, and producer surveys will be used to develop water and nutrient budgets for agricultural fields in the Eastern Corn Belt region. This research will link soil quality parameters and soil processes to water quality and gas flux data collected from monitored field sites.
