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 The investment, part of NRCS’s Conservation Innovation Grant
program, was matched by numerous stakeholder partners in
Illinois, Iowa, and Minnesota, for a total of nearly $2.25
million.
Dissolved nitrate in Midwestern agricultural drainage water is a
major contributing factor in downstream water pollution,
including feeding the algae that cause the so-called dead zone
in the Gulf of Mexico. Saturated buffers and denitrifying
bioreactors are low-cost, passive solutions, but they haven’t
been widely adopted across the region.
“The overarching goal of this new project, and for all our
university and private partners, is to make bioreactors and
saturated buffers work better, and also to increase their
adoption across the Midwest,” says Laura Christianson, project
director on the grant and assistant professor in the Department
of Crop Sciences at Illinois. Reid Christianson, research
assistant professor in crop sciences, and Richard Cooke of the
Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering are also
on the Illinois team.
Actually, it’s not entirely clear how widely the technologies
have been adopted, Christianson says. That’s one of the aims of
the project: to populate a database of the design and
performance details of all bioreactors and saturated buffers
across Illinois, Iowa, and Minnesota. She says that information
will help researchers understand what’s working and what isn’t,
so they know what to improve in future designs.
The project will also trial what Christianson calls “weird”
modifications to the usual bioreactor and saturated buffer
designs. Bioreactors are large trenches full of wood chips and
saturated buffers are riparian areas, often planted with
water-loving perennial grasses. In both cases, they’re situated
between cultivated fields and drainage ditches. Generally, tile
drains empty into these zones, and bacteria on the wood chips or
soil remove the nitrate as water flows through. But water can
flow too fast for the bacteria to work, especially in the
spring.
“The purpose of the weirdness is to make these practices work
better, especially under the highest flow rates. We’re going to
try a number of things to try to even out the flow, like pumping
water from drainage ditches back into the bioreactor. We’re also
going to try to pair a bioreactor and a saturated buffer
together. Sometimes water bypasses the bioreactor, so we're
going to route that into a saturated buffer. With all these
modifications, we're just really trying to treat more water,”
Christianson says.
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The final goal of the project includes two types of
novel monitoring systems. In the past, researchers had to travel to
sites on a regular basis to take water samples. But the team will be
installing high-tech equipment at some locations to be able to
detect water quality remotely in real time. They’re also going to
test a very low-tech approach, installing small discs into
bioreactors or buffers that absorb nitrate. These essentially record
the amount of nitrate that passes through the system, but can stay
put for long periods of time.
“We envision these as something farmers could use,” Christianson
says. “For example, if these little discs could be available for
maybe five bucks, farmers could put them out if they wanted to know
how much nitrate was in their tile drainage over a given month or
so. The technology is far from being able to do that with confidence
right now, but eventually this could be a very practical technology
for on-farm use.”
The funding is being matched in Illinois through cash contributions
from the Illinois Nutrient Research and Education Council (NREC),
the Illinois Farm Bureau, and the Walton Family Foundation, as well
as through cash and in-kind support from the Office of the Vice
Chancellor for Research and Innovation at the University of
Illinois, the Iowa Soybean Association, the Minnesota Department of
Agriculture, and several Soil and Water Conservation Districts.
“The world’s population is increasing, but available agricultural
land is decreasing. Through science and innovation, we can help
farmers improve the health of their operations and productivity on
their lands while protecting the natural resources we all depend
on,” says Acting NRCS Chief Kevin Norton. “The new systems, tools,
and technologies being developed through CIG are helping us ensure
the longevity of American agriculture.”
Read the full NRCS press release here.
The Department of Crop Sciences and the Department of Agricultural
and Biological Engineering are in the College of Agricultural,
Consumer and Environmental Sciences at the University of Illinois.
[Source: Laura Christianson
News writer: Lauren Quinn] |
