Cleaning the Chesapeake Bay from Space
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Category: AgricultureType: News
Source: USDA Agriculture Research Service
Date: Monday, August 30th, 2010
A pilot test of an innovative use of new remote sensing technologies to aid the Chesapeake Bay cleanup begins this year in Talbot County, Md., on the Bay's Eastern Shore.
Greg McCarty, a U.S.D.A. (USDA) soil scientist, and Dean Hively, now a visiting U.S.G.S. physical scientist, merged remote sensing, field sampling, and farm plan records to judge the effectiveness of winter cover crops in controlling farm nitrogen and phosphorus losses to the Bay.
McCarty and Hively lead an interagency research team that works closely with the Maryland Department of Agriculture. McCarty is at the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) Hydrology and Remote Sensing Lab (HRSL) in Beltsville, Md. ARS is USDA's principal intramural scientific research agency.
Cover crops-mostly rye, barley, and wheat-are a principal tool in Maryland for controlling nitrogen and phosphorus flows to the bay. The crops catch excess nitrogen and phosphorus left over from fertilizers and manures used to grow corn, soybean or other summer crops.
In a 4-year study using this combination of tools, McCarty and Hively showed that, of the 3 major cover crops, wheat is by far the least efficient at taking up nitrogen, due to its slow fall growth. Yet 60 percent of the land planted to cover crops is in winter wheat. Maryland pays farmers part of the costs of planting cover crops, with a premium for early-planted and non-wheat crops.
The pilot plan will allow the Talbot Co. soil conservation district office to evaluate underperforming fields to project for improved implementation in the coming year.
The scientists are developing software to summarize the data, by Co. and by watershed, to produce reports for Chesapeake Bay Watershed partners, including county, state, federal and other agencies.
This is all part of a feedback system that will lead to yearly adjustments in federal and state conservation plan implementation strategies.
With success, the plan will be scaled up to each of Maryland's 24 soil conservation districts statewide.
Read more about this research in the August 2010 issue of Agricultural Research magazine.
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