Two Approaches to Quantification of Nutrients from Agricultural Land PDF Download

Author: Stephen W. Kraszewski
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 90

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Author: Finn A. Bondeson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Compost
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Improper management of agricultural nutrients can have negative impacts on ecological and human health, notably through facilitating eutrophication in surface water bodies used for drinking water and recreation. Various management strategies can improve the outcomes of agricultural nutrient management, but some face operational and logistical challenges. This thesis provides analysis of two tools that can help practitioners improve their nutrient management strategies: a technical tool comprising an aerated composting and heat capture system and a spatial analysis tool offering methods to predict phosphorus-leaching potential from agricultural land at the watershed scale. The first study herein evaluates nutrient status and financial and energy cost for a pair of commercial compost windrows with and without forced aeration at full scale in a normal production setting. Compost treated with a forced aeration and heat capture system was deemed suitable for market in approximately 25% less time than a conventional, straddle turned windrow. Analysis of nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) dynamics throughout the study suggested that forced aeration likely reduced fugitive N losses via volatilization and denitrification, and P loss via leaching. During the active composting process, operational costs for force-aerated compost were 2.1 times more expensive and 5.5 times more energy-intensive than a conventional compost per m3. However, the energy and infrastructure cost offsets provided by the aeration and heat capture system could provide a net savings of $1.51 m3 finished compost. The second study herein presents a set of methods to predict and visualize soil P saturation ratio (PSR) and P mass balance of agricultural parcels across a watershed. A K-means cluster analysis was performed to aggregate agricultural parcels by soil texture, average slope, and crop type. Using a set of parcels encompassing approximately 20% of the watershed's agricultural land with known soil test and nutrient management parameters, predictions of PSR and P balance status of agricultural land across the watershed were made by cluster. This resulted in an average PSR of 0.0399 ± 0.0002 and an average P balance of 5.50 ± 0.22 kg P ha-1 yr-1. Results were used to visualize areas with potentially high P release potential; such visualizations could assist practitioners in nutrient management decision making.

Author: Rabindra N. Roy
Publisher: Food & Agriculture Org.
ISBN: 9789251050385
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 104

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Nutrient-balance assessments are valuable tools for delineating the consequences of farming on soil fertility. Various approaches and methods for different situations have been used in the past. This bulletin presents a state-of-the-art review of nutrient balance studies. It brings out the evolution of the approaches and methods, provides for comparisons among them, features the improvements made, and highlights remaining issues. This analysis will be useful in further development of the assessment methodologies as reliable tools for devising time-scale soil fertility management interventions.

Author: Stephanie Ann Nummer
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Agricultural conservation
Languages : en
Pages : 79

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Nitrogen and phosphorus runoff from agricultural lands and the subsequent impact on water quality has been of great concern in the United States, due to harmful algal blooms and anoxic zones in areas such as Lake Erie and the Gulf of Mexico. Conservation practices have been widely used to reduce the quantity of nutrients leaving a field, but there is a lack of research on the effectiveness of these practices using field scale data. The objective of this thesis is to quantify the effect of conservation practices on nitrogen and phosphorus runoff in farmlands. A meta-analysis was conducted using the Measured Annual Nutrient loads from AGricultural Environments (MANAGE) database created by the USDA-ARS. MANAGE is a compilation of 65 publications including data on nitrogen and phosphorus loads, runoff, land use, fertilizer application, and other field characteristics. The observational nature of the dataset makes direct comparisons from field to field impossible because of large variations in field characteristics. Thus, additional steps must be taken to estimate the effect of conservation practices on nutrient loss. To quantify this effect, I used propensity score matching and multilevel modeling, two statistical methods common for observational data. Propensity score matching shows that conservation practices have a significant reduction of 67.5% in total phosphorus, 83% in particulate phosphorus, and 67.3% in particulate nitrogen. Multilevel modeling results - calculated using two different computational methods - support these findings by showing a significant reduction of 57.7% in total phosphorus, 76.2% and 82.1% in particulate phosphorus (via the two methods), and 63.7% in particulate nitrogen. When examining different land uses and fertilizer application methods, the multilevel modeling showed that conservation practices had the most impact on row crops (e.g. corn and soybeans) and on farms fertilized via the injected or surfaced applied method. The results from this work represent the average effect of conservation practices on a national scale. At a regional scale, the effects of conservation practices may vary because of regional differences in agricultural practices and climate. To assist future research at regional and local scales, this thesis provides a Bayesian modeling framework for future quantification of these effects.

Author: Drechsel, Pay, Giordano, Mark, Gyiele, Lucy
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789290905707
Category : Soil fertility
Languages : en
Pages : 33

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Despite the importance of nutrient-water interactions, they are often ignored in analysis. After discussing the interrelationships between soil nutrients and water and reviewing methods for determining nutrient balances, this report describes an array of available methods for soil nutrient valuation and provides a discussion of four nutrient valuation studies, which together cover a range of scales, perspectives, and geographic contexts. It also includes case studies from Ghana, Mexico, sub-Saharan Africa, and an examination of possible approaches to valuing soil organic matter and its various functions--an often ignored area in literature.

Author: J. Dumanski
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN: 9780821342084
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 144

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Book Description
This bibliography is a review of available information on indicators of sustainable land management and land quality. The report compiles, organizes, and summarizes available data and information on indicators and makes them accessible through the World Wide Web, email, and as printed reports. It is useful for research on indicators of sustainability, as well as for decisionmakers faced with implementing a sustainable land management component in rural development projects.

Author: R.F. Follett
Publisher: Gulf Professional Publishing
ISBN: 0080537561
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 539

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Book Description
Nitrogen in the Environment: Sources, Problems, and Management is the first volume to provide a holistic perspective and comprehensive treatment of nitrogen from field, to ecosystem, to treatment of urban and rural drinking water supplies, while also including a historical overview, human health impacts and policy considerations. It provides a worldwide perspective on nitrogen and agriculture. Nitrogen is one of the most critical elements required in agricultural systems for the production of crops for feed, food and fiber. The ever-increasing world population requires increasing use of nitrogen in agriculture to supply human needs for dietary protein. Worldwide demand for nitrogen will increase as a direct response to increasing population. Strategies and perspectives are considered to improve nitrogen-use efficiency. Issues of nitrogen in crop and human nutrition, and transport and transformations along the continuum from farm field to ground water, watersheds, streams, rivers, and coastal marine environments are discussed. Described are aerial transport of nitrogen from livestock and agricultural systems and the potential for deposition and impacts. The current status of nitrogen in the environment in selected terrestrial and coastal environments and crop and forest ecosystems and development of emerging technologies to minimize nitrogen impacts on the environment are addressed. The nitrogen cycle provides a framework for assessing broad scale or even global strategies to improve nitrogen use efficiency. Growing human populations are the driving force that requires increased nitrogen inputs. These increasing inputs into the food-production system directly result in increased livestock and human-excretory nitrogen contribution into the environment. The scope of this book is diverse, covering a range of topics and issues from furthering our understanding of nitrogen in the environment to policy considerations at both farm and national scales.

Author: W. Graeme Donovan
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN: 9780821342367
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 76

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World Bank Technical Paper No. 408. This report is a critical review of the technical, economic, and institutional constraints on improving soil fertility in Sub-Saharan Africa, and the actions recommended to address them. Action plans prepared for Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, and Mali examine the demand for and supply of mineral fertilizers, the exploitation of local mineral resources, the prevention of soil erosion and increasing soil-water retention, and soil fertility management using organic technologies and management practices.

Author: Zdenko Rengel
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 1351427466
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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If you?re an agronomist, horticulturalist, plant and soil scientist, breeder, or soil microbiologist, you?ll want to read Nutrient Use in Crop Production to find everything you need to know about judicious nutrient management and maximizing nutrient utilization in the agricultural landscape. In this book, you?ll discover ways to minimize undesirable nutrient losses and techniques for preserving the environment while meeting the challenges of providing the earth?s increasing population with sufficient food, feed, and fiber to sustain life. Your existing knowledge base concerning this vital area of science will expand and grow as you become more open to the new ideas and applications contained in Nutrient Use in Crop Production. Most importantly, you?ll avoid the narrow scope found in most crop nutrition books and take a broader, more globally minded view of how to maximize nutrient use and minimize nutrient losses in the soil of agricultural systems. Specifically, you?ll find these and other areas covered: population growth, food production, and nutrient requirements managing soil fertility decline the role of nitrogen fixation in crop production delivering fertilizers through seed coatings micronutrient fertilizers the role of nutrient-efficient crops in modern agriculture Feeding the world without depleting the world?s viable soil nutrients is a monumental task--but one that can be achieved, as evidenced in the pages of Nutrient Use in Crop Production. You and your circle of students, professionals, and administrators will benefit greatly from this in-depth view of nutrient use in both developed and non-industrialized counties to give you a better sense of how to allow both the world and the world?s crops to grow.

Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309679702
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 423

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New York City's municipal water supply system provides about 1 billion gallons of drinking water a day to over 8.5 million people in New York City and about 1 million people living in nearby Westchester, Putnam, Ulster, and Orange counties. The combined water supply system includes 19 reservoirs and three controlled lakes with a total storage capacity of approximately 580 billion gallons. The city's Watershed Protection Program is intended to maintain and enhance the high quality of these surface water sources. Review of the New York City Watershed Protection Program assesses the efficacy and future of New York City's watershed management activities. The report identifies program areas that may require future change or action, including continued efforts to address turbidity and responding to changes in reservoir water quality as a result of climate change.