Right practice, right place: A conservation planning toolbox for meeting water quality goals in the Corn Belt

McLellan, Eileen; Schilling, Keith E.; Wolter, Calvin F.; Tomer, Mark D.; Porter, Sarah; Magner, Joe; Smith, Douglas R.; Prokopy, Linda Stalker

doi:10.2489/jswc.73.2.29a

Cited by 29 publications

(28 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…Applying these tools and relationships to coidentify areas of nutrient and sediment concern, viable BMPs, and on‐ and off‐farm benefits could provide farmers and farmland owners with more information (e.g., areas with low productivity and high potential for environmental benefits) about the potential of their fields to coproduce commodities and on‐ and off‐ farm environmental benefits. Importantly, BMP planning tools such as the Agricultural Conservation Planning Framework (Tomer et al, ) and Right Practice, Right Place (McLellan et al, ) are designed to provide users with a coupled field‐level and watershed‐level view of biophysical risks for nutrient and sediment loss and BMP placement. These tools are presently being applied in the U.S. Corn Belt, including locations in Iowa, Illinois, Minnesota, and Ohio, and could be useful in other agricultural regions, such as the Chesapeake Bay area on the East Coast of the United States.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Farmer and Farmland Owner Views on Spatial Targeting for Soil Conservation and Water Quality

Zimmerman

Tyndall

Schulte

et al. 2019

Water Resources Research

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The U.S. Corn Belt is highly productive with respect to grain and livestock commodities but often neglects to deliver other benefits such as soil stability, nutrient retention, and clean water. New precision technologies and conservation planning frameworks offer opportunities to adapt the current agricultural system to meet environmental goals along with production by strategically placing best management practices (BMPs) to target and address specific in‐field resource concerns. To understand farmers' and farmland owners' willingness to participate in such targeting schemes, we conducted in‐depth interviews with 18 farmers and farmland owners whose fields were targeted for soil and nutrient loss in two watersheds in central Iowa. We examined their current application of BMPs and opportunities and constraints to further adoption. We found that farmers and farmland owners often recognized the importance of producing a diverse suite of on‐ and off‐farm environmental benefits but lacked the context, information, certainty, and strong incentives to manage for them. Interviewees were generally receptive to using technologies to target BMPs to areas with resource concerns but expressed concerns about applications on their own land. They specifically perceived challenges related to cost, management complexity, coordination with government programs, and loss of autonomy. For broad acceptance, a spatially targeted conservation approach would need to be paired with expanded partnerships, trusted technical service, and adaptation incentives to reduce farm‐level economic trade‐offs.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Farmer and Farmland Owner Views on Spatial Targeting for Soil Conservation and Water Quality

Zimmerman

Tyndall

Schulte

et al. 2019

Water Resources Research

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“…McLellan et al. (2018) described Right Practice, Right Place (RPRP) Toolbox which includes a set of online conservation planning tools can link “right conservation practice” to “right place” at regional, watershed, and field scale, that will help in increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of water quality improvement efforts. Merriman, Daggupati, Srinivasan, and Hayhurst (2019) used Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model to evaluate the effectiveness of use of multiple agricultural Best Management Practices (BMPs) either as single BMP or combination of BMPs on nutrient losses from an agricultural field.…”

Section: Potential Management Practices For Reduction Of Crop Productmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impacts and management strategies for crop production in waterlogged or flooded soils: A review

et al. 2020

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Globally, flooding is one of the most damaging abiotic stresses, besides drought, that affects 17 million km 2 of land surface annually. Recent research indicates that climate change is resulting in more extreme weather events, such as flooding or soil waterlogging, that negatively affect crop production. Therefore, it is imperative to understand how flooding stress affects crops and to develop improved production practices that make cropping systems more resilient and able to cope with extreme weather events. This review paper summarizes the current state of knowledge on the impacts of flooding or soil waterlogging on crop production losses, nitrogen (N) losses, and provides potential management strategies to reduce these losses. The factors affecting the extent of flooding injury in plants as well as plant adaptations under waterlogging stress are also discussed briefly. For the purpose of this review, "flooding" refers to the situation when all or part of the plant is submerged under water, whereas "soil waterlogging" refers to the situation where soil pores are saturated with water. Soil waterlogging also promotes soil N losses through runoff, leaching, and denitrification. Potential management practices that can be used to mitigate soil waterlogging stress include the use of flood-tolerant varieties, adjusting management practices, improving drainage, and practicing adaptive nutrient management strategies. However, these might be site-or crop-specific management practices and they should be validated for their economic viability before developing future management plans that promote sustainable crop yields from waterlogged soils.Abbreviations: BMP, Best Management Practice; CDSI, controlled drainage and subirrigation; EEF, enhanced efficiency fertilizer; ET, evapotranspiration; Fv/Fm, ratio of variable fluorescence to material fluorescence; GIS, Geographic Information System; NBPT, N-(n-butyl) thiophosphoric triamide; NI, nitrification inhibitor; NUE, nitrogen use efficiency; PCU, polymer-coated urea; UI, urease inhibitors.This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.

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“…Further recognizing that erosion control practices, such as no-tillage, may exacerbate N losses, the planner could opt to include additional practices that are effective in removing NO 3 -N from agricultural drainage water. Used in this way, the CoPE Database serves as a menu of options from which a planner could develop a "treatment train" of practices (Lien and Magner 2017;McLellan et al 2018) at the watershed scale to manage mul-tiple resource concerns and minimize or even avoid water quality tradeoffs.…”

Section: Journal Of Soil and Water Conservationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Using the Conservation Practice Effectiveness (CoPE) Database to assess adoption tradeoffs

Smith¹,

White²,

McLellan³

et al. 2019

Journal of Soil and Water Conservation

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The newly published Conservation Practice Effectiveness (CoPE) Database compiles information on the effectiveness of a suite of conservation practices developed to treat contaminants in surface runoff and tile drainage water from agricultural landscapes. Traditional conservation practices such as no-tillage and conservation crop rotation are included in the CoPE Database, as well as novel practices such as drainage water management, blind inlets, and denitrification bioreactors. This will be particularly useful to conservation planners seeking new approaches to water quality problems associated with dissolved constituents, such as nitrate (NO 3) or soluble phosphorus (SP), and for researchers seeking to understand the circumstances in which such practices are most effective. Another novel feature of the database is the presentation of information on how individual conservation practices impact multiple water quality concerns. This information will be critical to enabling conservationists and policy makers to avoid (or at least be aware of) undesirable tradeoffs, whereby great efforts are made to improve water quality related to one resource concern (e.g., sediment) but exacerbate problems related to other concerns (e.g., NO 3 or SP). Finally, we note that the CoPE Database can serve as a source of the soft data needed to calibrate simulation models assessing the potential water quality tradeoffs of conservation practices, including those that are still being developed.

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Right practice, right place: A conservation planning toolbox for meeting water quality goals in the Corn Belt

Cited by 29 publications

References 18 publications

Farmer and Farmland Owner Views on Spatial Targeting for Soil Conservation and Water Quality

Farmer and Farmland Owner Views on Spatial Targeting for Soil Conservation and Water Quality

Impacts and management strategies for crop production in waterlogged or flooded soils: A review

Using the Conservation Practice Effectiveness (CoPE) Database to assess adoption tradeoffs

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