Soil Health Practices in Kansas
On this page:
Drinking water nitrate contamination is a significant economic and public health concern in The Great Plains, with few tested best practices for improving source water quality. This project seeks to establish a monitoring framework for quantifying the benefits of soil health practices for groundwater nitrate mitigation, by comparing among established fields varying in tilling, fertilizer and cover crop practices. This presentation shares the initial findings of the ROAR project “Soil Health Practices' Impact on Groundwater Nitrate Contamination” focused on connecting soil health practices and potential for groundwater and surface water nitrate contamination in northeastern Kansas. The team conducted a study to collect soils from eight farm fields and measure a host of soil health metrics, including water stable aggregates, microbial assays, soil extractable carbon and nitrogen forms, using a grad-based sampling approach to cover large fields. The presentation focuses on project goals, sampling design, field sampling, lab analyses, initial soil test results and next steps. Fields with a history of cover crops and no till agriculture appeared to have higher organic matter, available carbon and organic nitrogen, which are beneficial for soil health. Fields with these soil health practices also had lower amounts of extractable nitrate and a lower potential for nitrate leaching. Early results from these eight fields indicate the utility of these measures to examine the effects of soil health practices.