Improving water and nutrient use efficiency with Drainage Water Management

Abstract

In the Upper Midwest, hundreds of thousands of additional acres have been placed into tile drainage over the past couple of years as the Corn Belt continues to expand. Unmanaged tile systems, though, have virtually no control over when and how much water and nutrients are removed. A smarter system using drainage water management puts farmers in the driver seat with better management over their water and nutrients.

Changes of Root-Zone Soil Environment in Flooded Paddy Field under Controlled Drainage Conditions

“…This was identical with the results of Lu [22]. For the 10-20 cm soil layers during the flooded period, the CK treatment decreased slowly, but the flooded treatment decreased rapidly, the decrease amplitude was smaller than that of [10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20] , and F7 and F8 at the milking stage respectively reduced 2.6 mgkg -1 and 1.2 mgkg -1 on the 10 th flooded day. After the flood duration, the RAN of CK at every soil layer changed little, but the RAN content of the flooded treatment increased slightly.…”

“…Secondly, controlled drainage could reduce the concentration of nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) in the drainage channel, which mainly relies on crop uptake [12], nitrification-denitrification [13], and sediment deposition [14]. Lastly, it is an effective measure to improve the utilization of rainwater resources and avoid water-logging and salinization by controlling the retention time of storm water in fields and drains [15][16].…”

“…At present, most of the existing reports focus on N and P losses and paddy water quality purification [18][19], and the research on soil fertility usually focuses on a single fertility, with less consideration on the overall change law of soil water, fertilizer, and heat under the influence of external conditions [2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21]. By taking the water level of farmland as the technical index, our paper studies the change law of the root-zone soil fertility in the flooded paddy field under controlled drainage conditions, discloses the impact of the water level change on the microenvironment of the root-zone soil, and provides a reliable basis for exploring the changes of soil microenvironment and investigating the impact of the controlled-drainage on soil fertility.…”

Navigating the Socio-Bio-Geo-Chemistry and Engineering of Nitrogen Management in Two Illinois Tile-Drained Watersheds

“…This situation makes siting a bioreactor a challenge due to the depth of the tile as it passes from field to ditch and renders siting a wetland impossible due to lack of slope in these areas. Drainage water management works best when implemented on new tile systems designed for this capability (Ehmke, 2013). Our implementation on an existing tile system documented movement of the held-back water from the DWM system to the nearby free drainage system.…”