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Study to Track Ways to Cut Runoff from Elevated Phosphorus Fields
USAgNet - 11/12/2018

Some farm fields in northwest Ohio's Maumee River watershed have more phosphorus than their crops can use. Called "elevated phosphorus fields," such fields may be at higher risk of contributing to Lake Erie's harmful algal blooms.

That's the premise of a new five-year, $5 million study that hopes to learn about those fields and lower that risk by creating new public-private partnerships.

Led by Jay Martin, an ecological engineering professor with The Ohio State University's College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences (CFAES), the study plans to monitor and manage more than a dozen elevated phosphorus fields, all in the Maumee River watershed.

To do the work, the study is partnering with nutrient service providers -- consultants who advise farmers on crop and soil matters, such as the types and rates of fertilizer to apply -- and some of the farmers they work with. The nutrient service providers are helping find farmers to help with the study; the farmers in turn are allowing their fields to be used as sites for the study.

"I'm excited," said Martin, a faculty member in CFAES's Department of Food, Agricultural and Biological Engineering and a faculty researcher with Ohio State's Ohio Sea Grant program and the college's Stone Laboratory. "This is a way that the agricultural community, Ohio State and U.S. Department of Agriculture researchers, and nongovernmental organizations can work together to address an important unknown. By doing so, this will improve water quality while supporting agricultural production."

Phosphorus runoff from farm fields is a significant driver of the harmful algal blooms plaguing Lake Erie. The blooms are sometimes toxic, are often many miles wide, and threaten recreation, tourism, drinking water safety and people's health. The Maumee watershed, which empties into the lake at Toledo, is the lake's largest source of phosphorus loading.

Martin said the study has four main parts: recruit the partner farmers; measure phosphorus runoff on the farmers' fields; use and evaluate best management practices on the fields -- practices aimed at reducing the fields' phosphorus runoff while also maintaining their yields; and then, by helping form further public-private partnerships, expand the adoption of the practices throughout the watershed.

The study includes partners and supporters from CFAES, the Nature Conservancy, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS), Ohio State's Center on Education and Training for Employment, and 12 Ohio agricultural businesses and organizations.

USDA's National Institute of Food and Agriculture is funding the study, which started in September and will run through summer 2023.

Phosphorus, a nutrient, is needed for crops to grow. It's an important part of the fertilizers and manures that farmers apply to their fields. But rain can wash phosphorus out of the soil and then into drainage ditches, rivers and eventually Lake Erie.

In 2016, Ohio, Michigan and the Canadian province of Ontario agreed to reduce the phosphorus entering Lake Erie by 40 percent, with a goal of doing it by the year 2025. Experts think that such a reduction will keep the lake's blooms at safe levels. Ongoing efforts to meet that goal involve farmers, scientists and agencies, among others.

The new study, for its part, is specifically targeting elevated phosphorus fields, which bear that name because, after years of fertilizer or manure applications, they've accumulated more phosphorus in their soil than their crops need. The excess doesn't hurt the crops; the crops just don't take it up. But sometimes the phosphorus is released from the soil and ends up in Lake Erie, where it contributes to harmful algal blooms.


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