Quantifying the Effectiveness of Saturated Buffers on Reducing Nutrient Loading from Tile Drainage Waters

The USDA intends to award, as a sole source, a contract to the Agricultural Drainage Management Coalition (ADMC) for Quantifying the Effectiveness of Saturated Buffers on Reducing Nutrient Loading from Tile Drainage Waters. Background Under the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) grass filters and riparian buffers have been installed to intercept sediment and nutrients before they reach rivers, streams, lakes, and other waterways. These buffers are often by-passed by agricultural drainage systems that reduce their effectiveness in lowering the amount of nutrients entering waterways. A saturated buffer is new practice in which in which the water table is artificially raised to divert drainage water to a vegetated, riparian buffer, reducing nitrate loading to surface water via enhanced denitrification. The Farm Service Agency (FSA) needs to know how effective these saturated buffers are and how to make them more effective. A number of saturated buffer sites have been monitored for the past few years already, but long-term monitoring is critical to obtain an accurate sense of practice effectiveness. Further, the infrastructure is already in place for such monitoring. Objective The objective of the project is to monitor the performance of saturated buffers in reducing nitrogen loadings into streams and to do so intensively enough to support the development of a decision support tool for practice site selection. Scope This project monitors and evaluates 7 saturated buffers fields in Iowa for an additional year. Tasks This project will - Measure and estimate nitrogen concentrations and flow data in real time at 7 saturated buffer fields in Iowa and Illinois from agricultural tile drains before being distributed along the buffer, monitor the flow data for water through tile drains and distributed to the buffers, and the nitrogen concentration in ground water as it moves through the buffers, - Incorporate these data with cost data to assess the cost effectiveness of saturated buffers in reducing nitrogen loadings from tile drainage water, - Develop outreach materials to increase awareness of the suitability and effectiveness of the saturated buffer practice. - Develop a decision support tool for identifying sites where saturated buffers are most likely to be cost effective that uses readily available data and requires no particular technical expertise. Deliverables - Quarterly reports. - A comprehensive final report that includes data collected, a comprehensive description of the monitoring and analytical approaches used, research findings, and policy recommendations. The report must be in sufficient detail to enable FSA to replicate results. - Decision support tool. - Outreach materials. Period of Performance The period of performance shall be from contract signing through one year after contract signing. Market Research This project is being sole sourced to the Agricultural Drainage Management Coalition (ADMC), which has been doing similar work for FSA for the past several years, meeting all quality measures. ADMC will continue to employ investigators with sufficient expertise and experience on this project. Government-furnished Property N/A Security Requirement N/A