A NEW GIS APPROACH TO ASSESS NITROGEN MANAGEMENT ACROSS THE USA

• Main Author: J. A. Delgado
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: GIS; precision conservation; precision farming; nitrogen trading tool; NLEAP GIS; nitrate leaching; North Atlantic
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.175.7934; http://www.icpaonline.org/finalpdf/abstract_176.pdf

Nitrogen has an essential function in the maximization of farmers ’ agricultural output and economic returns. This element is very dynamic and mobile, characteristics that create challenges in its management and that can contribute to considerable off-site nitrogen losses. The magnitude of these losses can be affected by site-specific physical and chemical factors. These physical and chemical factors can vary greatly across the landscape, further increasing the complexity of managing nitrogen. A new tool that can be used to quickly integrate spatial and temporal variabilities and contribute to the assessment of risky landscape-management combinations has recently been developed: the NLEAP-GIS tool can facilitate the download of U.S. GIS soil databases as well as climate databases that have been collected by weather stations across the U.S., and quickly format these databases to conduct evaluations across a given site-specific field. Users will need to set up the management data to be evaluated. A national NLEAP-GIS nitrogen management database that will be available to users is being developed to help integrate soil, weather and management databases. Results from studies across several U.S. regions using GIS, ranging from cornsoybean rotations in the North Atlantic region, to manure applications in the Midwest, to irrigated small grain, vegetable and cover crops grown in the western United States show that NLEAP-GIS is a useful tool for assessing the effects of nitrogen inputs across risky landscape-management combinations and can potentially be used to assess the effects of nitrogen management on nitrogen use efficiencies across regions of the USA.