Abstract Water table management through controlled tile drainage and subsurface irrigation (CDSI), retrofitting to conventional drainage, has been developed abate the environmental impacts of meanwhile supporting agroecosystems crop productivity. Since profile new technologies is a prerequisite understanding their socio-economic benefits, life cycle assessment was conducted assess CDSI on corn ...

Excess nutrient inputs from agricultural and urban sources have accelerated eutrophication increased the incidence of algal blooms in Great Lakes Basin (GLB). Lake basin management to address these threats relies on understanding key drivers pollution. Here, we use a random forest machine learning model leverage information 202 monitored streams GLB predict seasonal annual flow-weighted concent...

Subsurface-tile drainage is designed to remove gravitational water and soluble salts from the soil-root zone. However, soil swelling, as influenced by soil Na and electrical conductivity (EC), will reduce saturated hydraulic conductivity. The objective of this research was to determine the influence of Na and EC on the amount of water retained at field capacity (33 kPa), in northern Great Plain...

Herbicide losses from agriculture represent potential human health hazards, and are one focus of the Conservation Effects Assessment Project. Since frequent herbicide sampling can be rigorous and expensive, it is desirable to determine expected uncertainties associated with reduced sampling frequencies. Atrazine, simazine, alachlor, acetochlor, metolachlor, and glyphosate were monitored in tile...

Over the 150 year history of major agricultural activity in Iowa nearly all the native prairie (99.9%) and wetlands (95%) were lost as native plant communities were converted to row-crop agriculture. This major change from perennial to annual upland vegetation was accompanied by broad scale installation of tile drainage intended to remove moisture from saturated wetland soils, increasing availa...

Subsurface tile drainage from row-crop agricultural production systems has been identified as a major source of nitrate entering surface waters in the Mississippi River basin. Noncontrollable factors such as precipitation and mineralization of soil organic matter have a tremendous effect on drainage losses, nitrate concentrations, and nitrate loadings in subsurface drainage water. Cropping syst...