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ARS Home » Plains Area » Temple, Texas » Grassland Soil and Water Research Laboratory » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #375406
Research Project: Contributions of Climate, Soils, Species Diversity, and Management to Sustainable Crop, Grassland, and Livestock Production Systems

Location: Grassland Soil and Water Research Laboratory

Title: Historical shifts in United States manuresheds

Author
item Flynn, Kyle
item Spiegal, Sheri
item Smith, Douglas
item Kleinman, Peter

Submitted to: ASA-CSSA-SSSA Annual Meeting Abstracts
Publication Type: Abstract Only
Publication Acceptance Date: 9/1/2020
Publication Date: 11/13/2020
Citation: Flynn, K.C., Spiegal, S.A., Smith, D.R., Kleinman, P.J. 2020. Historical shifts in United States manuresheds. ASA-CSSA-SSSA Annual Meeting Virtual, November 9-13, 2020.

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: Manuresheds, a term concerned with the balance of manure availability for agricultural lands surrounding animal feeding operations, are important to achieve optimal nutrient recycling to promote sustainable agriculture systems. Spatial analytics focused on manuresheds provide locations of nutrient sources/sinks in regards to manure production versus agricultural land needs at a given spatial scale. These spatial analytics have been analyzed at numerous spatial scales (i.e. national, county level, etc.), but have yet to be subject to national level spatio-temporal analytics. Spatio-temporal analytics focused on the redistribution of manure-based nutrients (phosphorus and nitrogen) at the county-level will provide information regarding portions of the U.S. experiencing growth/shrinking of source (overabundance of nutrients for given agricultural lands) and sink (requires more nutrients to meet agricultural land needs) hotspots. Thus, this research aims to apply spatio-temporal manureshed analytics for years 1987 to 2017 across 3,109 counties. This retrospective approach will establish an understanding of the national-scale patterns of manuresheds that will better inform future needs for nutrient management. Understanding these spatio-temporal patterns will provide focus areas in which sustainable agricultural systems can be improved.