U.S. flagAn official website of the United States government
                    Here's how you know **Official websites use .gov**
                            
                            A **.gov** website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.
 **Secure .gov websites use HTTPS**
                            
                            A **lock** (                            
                              A locked padlock                                                      
                            
                            ) or **https://** means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.


Menu Agricultural Research Service
						
                    U.S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
 National Soil Erosion Research Laboratory: West Lafayette, IN
 close



    Research

                    Research Projects
                                    Publications
                                    Collaborations
                                    News
                                    Software
                People

                    Staff Listing
                                    Careers


        


                    Outreach
                        Fact Sheets
                                    Videos
                                    Seminars
                                    Careers
                    Our Lab
                        Phosphorus Removal Structures
                                    CEAP St. Joseph River Watershed
                                    WEPP Model
                                    USLE Database
                                    RUSLE
                                    
                                    Conferences
                                    Scientist Almuni
                                    Local TalksSearch small
                    Search
            
            ARS Home
                                About ARS
                                Contact Us




ARS Home Midwest Area West Lafayette, Indiana National Soil Erosion Research Laboratory Research





- Penn, Chad
- Williams, Mark
- Flanagan, Dennis
- Renschler, Chris - Christian
- Gonzalez, Javier
- Frankenberger, James - Jim
- Water Availability and Watershed Management (211)
- Soil and Air (212)
- Sustainable Agricultural Systems Research (216)

Research Project: **Location:
                            National Soil Erosion Research Laboratory** Project Number: 5020-21600-001-000-D
                        
                        Project Type: In-House Appropriated Start Date: Oct 9, 2023
                        
                        End Date: Oct 8, 2028 **Objective:**
                        
                        Objective 1: Enhance and develop best management practices that optimize crop nutrition and ecosystem services related to soil health, water quality, and crop production efficiency for Central U.S. cropping systems.
Subobjective 1.A: Develop relationships that describe how soil properties partly control soil P dynamics and kinetics in the context of crop uptake.
Subobjective 1.B: Assess the impact of combined conservation practices on soil health indicators, including soil organic C dynamics (SOC) and physical properties.
Subobjective 1.C: Quantify phosphorus uptake efficiency and timing in corn towards formulating more efficient nutrient application strategies.
Subobjective 1.D: Evaluate the effect of soil phosphorus drawdown on crop yield and water quality in tile-drained fields among three different regions of Indiana (Northeast, Central, and Eastern).

Objective 2: Enhance, develop, integrate, and support soil erosion prediction tools to enable and inform policy-maker decisions on soil conservation practices and improve communication on the impact of erosion on sediment, nutrient, and carbon budgets.
Subobjective 2.A: Improve USDA-ARS soil erosion model functionality and performance.
Sub-objective 2.B: Enhance prediction of Soil erosion and redistribution in agricultural landscapes under climate and land use change.

Objective 3: Improve functionality and resilience of agricultural systems in the Central U.S. to drought and extreme weather through the expansion, development, integration, and deployment of hydrological modeling across coordinated Long-Term Agroecosystem Research (LTAR) network sites.
Subobjective 3.A: Evaluate the impact of management on resilience of soil health to extreme weather of depression watersheds.
Subobjective 3.B: Assess the propagation of drought through the hydrological system in the Western Lake Erie Basin.
Subobjective 3.C: Systems/community resilience and natural resource sustainability at the agriculture-environment-society nexus. **Approach:**
                        
                        Approach Objective 1: Laboratory and field crop growth experiments will be used to study nutrient uptake at several scales for improving fertility recommendations as well as assessing how various management practices impact soil organic matter stability and water quality.

Approach Objective 2: This research will expand and improve sediment transport knowledge, equations, and logic used within process-based soil erosion prediction technologies. Paired no-till vs. tilled soils will be subjected to simulated rainfall in the laboratory, as well as inflow water to measure interrill and rill detachment rates and determine baseline erodibility parameters. Existing public web services from NRCS (https://data.nal.usda.gov/dataset/soil-data-access-web-service), U.S. Geological Service (USGS) (https://www.mrlc.gov/data-services-page), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and NASA (https://daymet.ornl.gov/) and National Agricultural Statistical Service (NASS) (https://www.nass.usda.gov/Research_and_Science/Cropland/sarsfaqs2.php) will be used with data transformation algorithms developed to integrate these datasets of different scales in dynamic mapping applications related to soil erosion at a specific scale (e.g. pixel size, field size and shapes).

Approach Objective 3: Historic and additional soil samples within depression watersheds will be analyzed to better understand long- and short-term soil redistribution dynamics of spatial and temporal pattern within depression watersheds. Long-term datasets of precipitation, soil moisture, and discharge across spatial scales ranging from individual fields to large watersheds will be leveraged to quantify how anomalous meteorological conditions transition into hydrological drought.


Return to top


Connect with ARS Sign up


ARS Home
                            USDA.gov
                            Plain Writing
                            Policies & Links
                            Civil Rights Statements
                            FOIA
                            Accessibility Statement
                            Privacy Policy
                            Non-Discrimination Statement
                            Quality of Information
                            USA.gov
                            WhiteHouse.gov