Location: Food Animal Environmental Systems Research
Project Number: 5040-12630-007-039-I
Project Type: Interagency Reimbursable Agreement
Start Date: May 2, 2024
End Date: May 1, 2029
Objective:
Evaluate 4Rs of Nitrogen Management Strategies; Nutrient Management, and use of Cover Crops and Animal Manure. Impact on GHG emission and Impacts on/of related soil indices.
Approach:
The MWA will leverage existing resources from Congressional base-funds, networks and expertise related to the GRACEnet and others. Base funds provide salaries for permanent scientific and their support staff. The IRA funds will be used to complement some of these efforts with purchase additional equipment, supplies, IRA related travel and adding to the ARS human potential with term employees. ARS base project objective: Evaluate nutrient availability and potential environmental quality benefits of winter cover crops, animal manure and reduced tillage practices in comparison to a conventionally tilled corn-soybean rotation. Meta data, soil data and GHG data will be colleced. Experimental field plot studies will include the following treatments to compare N sources (chemical vs. manure), also cover crop, fertilizer rate and placement on GHG emissions and crop yield. The main comparison will be chemical fertilizer to poultry litter for GHG emissions.
1. Chemical fertilizers (various rates)
2. Animal manure (poultry litter)
3. Cover crop vs. no cover crop
4. Application placement (broadcast vs. subsurface banding)
Data will be collected year-round on the field plot experiments supported by in-house and IRA external funding. Use of cover crops to reduce off-season soil N availability and GHGs emissions will also be investigated, specifically cover crop species and termination (winter kill vs winter surviving). Deliverables/outcomes: Greenhouse gas emission data (N2O, CH4, CO2) and other soil/plant information collected that can be used to improve national inventory, model parameterization, and modeling validation.
Ancillary and data includes repeated georeferenced incremental soil sampling for soil C (total, inorganic and organic), pH. Sand, silt and clay content (baseline), bulk density, texture, total N, and inorganic N, soil P and K plus crop yield. Data will be made immediately available to the IRA data team per the protocols established by AA#3.
