Source: OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY submitted to NRP
WATERSHED MODELING TO ENHANCE WATER QUALITY AND AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION
Sponsoring Institution
National Institute of Food and Agriculture
Project Status
COMPLETE
Funding Source
HATCH
Reporting Frequency
Annual
Accession No.
1014686
Grant No.
(N/A)
Cumulative Award Amt.
(N/A)
Proposal No.
(N/A)
Multistate No.
(N/A)
Project Start Date
Nov 21, 2017
Project End Date
Sep 30, 2022
Grant Year
(N/A)
Program Code
[(N/A)]- (N/A)
Recipient Organization
OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY
1680 MADISON AVENUE
WOOSTER,OH 44691
Performing Department
Food, Agric and Biological Engineering
Non Technical Summary
While nutrient reduction targets exist for many water bodies, it is unknown if and how long various BMPs will take to reach these goals, as well as how climate change will impact their effectiveness. It is clear from preliminary edge-of-field results, that BMPs, such as fertilizer placement, reduced application rates and cover crops, can effectively improve water quality. It is also clear from historical trends and predictions from Global Climate Models (GCMs) that temperature will increase, winter and spring precipitation will likely increase, and storm intensity will likely increase in Ohio and regionally. This leads to two important gaps in knowledge: 1. It is unknown how long effective BMPs require, and what annual rates of adoption are needed to reach reduction goals, and 2. It is unknown how changes in climate will impact the ability of BMPs to reach these goals. This information is vital for management and policy groups to determine what annual rates of adoption and financial incentives will be required to reduce Lake Erie HABs to levels that do not pose threats to human or ecosystem health, as specified in the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, Annex 4. There is a critical need to address these gaps in knowledge because without this information, policy and funding may not support the best management practices at the best times, ultimately not reaching the targeted reductions.Probable Duration. The estimated maximum time likely to be required to complete this project and publish results infive years. As model calibration and validation is complete and initial scenarios are being evaluated to test various sensitivity analyses and management alternatives. We have also formed and had meetings with a stakeholder group. After completion of the final scenarios results will be presented in publications, presentations and other products.Personnel: The project will be lead by Drs. Margaret Kalcic and Jay Martin and be supported by post-docs and students working with their research groups.
Animal Health Component
40%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
30%
Applied
40%
Developmental
30%
Classification

Knowledge Area (KA)Subject of Investigation (SOI)Field of Science (FOS)Percent
11203202050100%
Knowledge Area
112 - Watershed Protection and Management;

Subject Of Investigation
0320 - Watersheds;

Field Of Science
2050 - Hydrology;
Goals / Objectives
Our long-term goal is to be able to provide sustained support to decision makers with watershed models that produce robust management recommendations to enhance water quality and agricultural production.Specific Objectives:1. To determine adoption rates and Best Management Plans (BMPs) required to reach water quality goals.2. To determine how climate change will impact annual adoption rates and BMPs required to reach water quality goals.3. To work with an advisory group throughout the project to evaluate and determine the management and climate change scenarios to be analyzed, and pursue outreach activities to disseminate results.
Project Methods
Improved and validated models of regional watersheds that can be used to analyze the impact of management scenarios on water quality and agricultural production.The watershed models will be developed, calibrated and validated for regional watersheds, and include details of agricultural practices (e.g. crop rotations, fertilizer application and tillage practices), subsurface drainage management and point-source locations and loading rates. These models simulate fluxes of sediments, phosphorus and nitrogen to Lake Erie from the Maumee watershed at daily time steps. Since the models will use meteorological and point source inputs from multiple sources, we will, first, run simulations using common meteorological forcing for a baseline period, acquired from the National Climate Data Center, and a common set of point sources data estimated from EPA discharge permits for all facilities in the watershed. Data from ongoing monitoring, including that from other projects will also be used for model development and validation.Through stakeholder consultation, identify alternate management scenarios, including individual and bundled BMPs with proposed adoption rates, and climate change projections to be assessed with the watershed models.In consultation with the advisory group, we will evaluate several regional and state-level policy-relevant watershed management scenarios. During stakeholder meetings the scenarios will be discussed and refined. BMPs evaluated will likely focus on nutrient management (i.e. fertilizer placement, timing, and amount), in-field management (cover crops, tillage, and crop rotation) and edge of field management (controlled drainage, wetlands, buffer strips). Results from these scenarios will be reviewed with the advisory group to identify management scenarios that are most effective in reducing nutrient loads further analysis. We will also get feedback from the advisory group regarding a proposed approach to analyze climate change influences on nutrient load reduction.

Progress 10/01/19 to 09/30/20

Outputs
Target Audience:The target audiences of this work include researchers working on hydrology and water quality problems, and regional agricultural and environmental stakeholders and advocates and policy-makers who are working on cleaning up Lake Erie's inflowing waters while maintaining agricultural productivity. Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Graduate students, post-doctoral scholars, and faculty have all attended and presented their research at conferences, including: the Water Management Association of Ohio 46thAnnual Conference in Columbus, OH during November, 2017; the American Geophysical Union 2017 Fall Meeting in New Orleans, LA during December, 2017; the Society for Freshwater Science Annual Meeting in Detroit, MI during May, 2018; American Ecological Engineering Society Annual Meeting in Houston, Texas during June, 2018; the International Association of Great Lakes Research Annual Conference in Toronto, Canada during June, 2018; the American Society of Agricultural Engineers Annual International Meeting in Detroit, MI during August, 2018; the Water Management Association of Ohio 47thAnnual Conference in Cincinnati, OH during October, 2017; the OhioConservation Tillage Conference in Ada, OH during March 2019;the Ohio Stormwater Conference in Sharonville, OH during May, 2019; The62nd annual Conference on Great Lakes Research at the International Association of Great Lakes Research (IAGLR) in Brockport, NY during June, 2019; the American Society of Civil Engineers Environmental and Water Resources Institute conference in Pittsburgh, PA during June 2019; the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE) in Boston, MA during July, 2019;theAnnual Conference of the Soil and Water Conservation Society (SWCS) in Pittsburg, PA during July 2019;the Water Management Association of Ohio 48thAnnual Conference in Columbus, OH during November, 2017;the Virtual Poster Symposium for the American Ecological Engineering Society Annual Meeting during June, 2020; the virtual American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE) Annual International Meeting during July, 2020; and the virtual Ohio Stormwater Conference in August, 2020. Graduate students, post-doctoral scholars, and faculty also attended and presented in the Understanding Algal Blooms: State of the Science Conference in Toledo, OH in September of 2017 and 2018. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Researchers have presented findings to the broader research community through the conferences listed above, as well as through stakeholder meetings and targeted working groups. They have also presented findings to local and regional stakeholders through invited presentations to Ohio Environmental Protection Agency and Ohio Department of Agriculture, targeted meetings through Ohio State University's College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences, and through workshops with a stakeholder advisory group composed of experts and advocates in agricultural, environmental, and policy sectors. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?Now that we are completing the process of publishing findings from the original research project, we are branching out into new research endeavors that stem from the first. We will continue working on the articles that are in preparation and under review to carry them through the peer review process. We will also continue to improve the models through comparison against edge-of-field monitoring data and address some of the greatest data and model gaps outlined by the stakeholder process.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? In a continued stakeholder-driven, multiple-modeling collaboration, we identified more feasible scenarios that would like likely be adopted across agricultural lands that comprise ~80% of the watershed. We then analyzed scenarios with future climate inputs to understand how discharge and management needs may change with variations in precipitation and temperature. We are completing the process now through peer-reviewed publication of two papers, with a third under review, and a fourth soon to be submitted to a journal (Kujawa et al., 2020; Evenson et al., accepted; Martin et al., in review). We have also expanded on this project along two themes. First, we are monitoring and modeling soil health and the corresponding impact on water quality. We are beginning to monitor properties related to soil health on fields in Ohio and determine whether there are relationships between soil health and water quality in agricultural runoff. We are also focusing on critical hydrology model improvements needed to more accurately simulate soil health improvements, including soil physical properties, in the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT), a watershed model used to simulate the effects of BMPs on water quality. We participated in a workshop with experts on both water quality modeling and soil health and from that came our first concept paper (Zimnicki et al., 2020). Second, we are monitoring and modeling legacy phosphorus in agricultural fields. We are expanding our stakeholder-driven approach to engage with nutrient service providers (NSPs), such as agronomists and certified crop advisors who provide technical assistance to producers in fertilizer management at a field scale. This public-private partnership will be used to implement BMPs on farm fields with elevated phosphorus levels, and we will assess the outcomes with edge-of-field monitoring and simulate scaling up of the approach with the SWAT model. Additional peer-reviewed publications related to water quality and agricultural BMPs in the western Lake Erie watersheds include a review paper on BMPs beyond the farm field (Kalcic et al., 2018), analysis on farmer adoption of cover crops (Burnett et al., 2018), guidance on what we currently know about solving Lake Erie harmful algal blooms (Wilson et al., 2018), reporting of edge-of-field monitoring of soluble nutrients traveling through subsurface drains (Pease et al., 2018), modeling and measurement of drainage water management (Shedekar et al., accepted), documenting improvements in understanding and simulating manure management (Long et al., 2018; Kast et al., 2019; Kast et al., in review), performance of phosphorus filters for treating legacy fields (Shedekar et al., 2020), climate change analysis in western Lake Erie watersheds (Kalcic et al., 2019; Yuan et al., 2020), and an economic analysis of BMPs (Liu et al., in press). Further, we are moving toward understanding how urban nutrient loading impacts the western Lake Erie basin with (1) a study on how urban land uses affects water quality (with particular focus on nutrients), and (2) several studies on urban BMP performance and modeling and how they related to reduction of the urban nutrient load to the western Lake Erie basin.Publications have been developed out of these efforts and will continue to be developed in the coming years (Søberg et al., 2019; Winston et al., 2019; Smith et al., 2020; Tirpak et al., 2020; Lee et al., 2020; Winston et al., 2020a; Lisenbee et al., 2020; Winston et al., 2020b; Tirpak et al., 2021; Tirpak et al., in press).

Publications

  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Smith, J.S., Winston, R.J., Martin, J.F., Tirpak, R.A., Wituszynski, D., and Boening, K. (2020). The seasonality of nutrients and sediment in residential stormwater runoff: Implications for nutrient-sensitive waters. Journal of Environmental Management. 276, 111248.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Tirpak, R.A., Winston, R.J., Feliciano, M., and Dorsey, J.D. (2020). Stormwater quality performance of permeable interlocking concrete pavers in a cold climate. Environmental Science and Pollution Research. 27, 21716-21732.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Winston, R.J., Arend, K.K., Dorsey, J.D., and Hunt, W.F. (2020a). Water quality performance of a permeable pavement and stormwater harvesting treatment train stormwater control measure. Blue-Green Systems. 2(1), 91-111.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Winston, R.J., Arend, K.K., Dorsey, J.D., Johnson, J.P., and Hunt, W.F. (2020b). Hydrologic performance of a permeable pavement and stormwater harvesting treatment train stormwater control measure. Journal of Sustainable Water in the Built Environment. 6(1), 04019011.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Yuan, S., Quiring, S.M., Kalcic, M. M., Apostel, A., Evenson, G., Kujawa, H. (2020). Optimizing climate model selection for hydrological modeling: a case study in the Maumee River Basin using the SWAT. Journal of Hydrology. doi:10.1016/j.jhydrol.2020.125064.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Zimnicki, T., Boring, T., Evenson, G., Kalcic, M., Karlen, D., Wilson, R., Zhang, Y., Blesh, J. (2020). On Quantifying Water Quality Benefits of Healthy Soils. BioScience, 70 (4). 343-352. doi:10.1093/biosci/biaa011.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Dippold, D., Aloysius*, N., Keitzer, C., Yen, H., Arnold, J., Daggupati, P., Fraker, M., Martin, J., Robertson, D., Sowa, S., Johnson, M., White, M., Ludsin, S. 2020. Forecasting the combined effects of anticipated climate change and agricultural conservation practices on fish recruitment dynamics in Lake Erie. Freshwater Biology. DOI: 10.1111/fwb.13515.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Fraker, M.E., S Conor Keitzer, James S Sinclair, Noel R Aloysius, David A Dippold, Haw Yen, Jeffrey G Arnold, Prasad Daggupati, Mari-Vaughn V Johnson, Jay F Martin, Dale M Robertson, Scott P Sowa, Michael J White, Stuart A Ludsin. (2020). Projecting the effects of agricultural conservation practices on stream fish communities in a changing climate. Science of The Total Environment: 747: 141112.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Howard, G. Brian E Roe, Matthew G Interis, Jay Martin. (2020). Addressing Attribute Value Substitution in Discrete Choice Experiments to Avoid Unintended Consequences. Environmental and Resource Economics. 222: 1-26.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Kujawa, H.A., Kalcic, M., Martin, J., Aloysius, N., Apostel, A., Kast, J., Murumkar, A., Evenson, G., Becker, R., Boles, C., Confesor, R., Dagnew, A., Guo, T., Muenich, R., Redder, T., Scavia, D., Wang, Y. (2020). The hydrologic model as a source of nutrient loading uncertainty in a future climate. Science of the Total Environment. doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.138004.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Lee, S., Suits, M., Witusynski, D., Winston, R.J., Martin, J.F., and Lee, J. (2020). Residential urban stormwater runoff: Profiles of microbiome and antibiotic resistance. Science of the Total Environment. 723, 138033.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Lisenbee, L., Hathaway, J.M., Negm, L., Youssef, M., and Winston, R.J. (2020). Enhanced Bioretention Cell Modeling with DRAINMOD-Urban: Moving from Water Balances to Hydrograph Production. Journal of Hydrology. 582, 124491.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Reppun, F., Jennifer Syvertsen, Jay Martin, Jonathan Deenik, Casey Hoy. (2020). Soil management practices of farmers in the K?ne?ohe Bay watershed and potential for implementing algae-based soil amendments. Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems. 22: 1-29.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Shedekar, V., Penn, C., Pease, L., King, K., Kalcic, M., Livingston, S. (2020). Performance of a ditch-style phosphorus removal structure for treating agricultural drainage water with aluminum-treated steel slag. Water, 12. doi:10.3390/w12082149.


Progress 10/01/18 to 09/30/19

Outputs
Target Audience:The target audiences of this work include researchers working on hydrology and water quality problems, and regional agricultural and environmental stakeholders and advocates and policy-makers who are working on cleaning up Lake Erie's inflowing waters while maintaining agricultural productivity. Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Graduate students, post-doctoral scholars, and faculty have all attended and presented their research at conferences, including: the Water Management Association of Ohio 46th Annual Conference in Columbus, OH during November, 2017; the American Geophysical Union 2017 Fall Meeting in New Orleans, LA during December, 2017; the Society for Freshwater Science Annual Meeting in Detroit, MI during May, 2018; American Ecological Engineering Society Annual Meeting in Houston, Texas during June, 2018; the International Association of Great Lakes Research Annual Conference in Toronto, Canada during June, 2018; the American Society of Agricultural Engineers Annual International Meeting in Detroit, MI during August, 2018; the Ohio Conservation Tillage Conference in Ada, OH during March 2019; the Ohio Stormwater Conference in Sharonville, OH during May, 2019; 62nd annual Conference on Great Lakes Research at the International Association of Great Lakes Research (IAGLR) in Brockport, NY during June, 2019; the American Society of Civil Engineers Environmental and Water Resources Institute conference in Pittsburgh, PA during June 2019; the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE) in Boston, MA during July, 2019; the Annual Conference of the Soil and Water Conservation Society (SWCS) in Pittsburg, PA during July 2019; Graduate students, post-doctoral scholars, and faculty also attended and presented in the Understanding Algal Blooms: State of the Science Conference in Toledo, OH on September 13, 2018 How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Researchers have presented findings to the broader research community through the conferences listed above. They have also presented findings to local and regional stakeholders through invited presentations to Ohio Environmental Protection Agency and Ohio Department of Agriculture, targeted meetings through Ohio State University's College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences, and through three workshops with a stakeholder advisory group composed of experts and advocates in agricultural, environmental, and policy sectors. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?Now that we have several mature research products, our main goal in the coming year is to publish the findings from this work in peer-reviewed journals. We will continue working on the articles that are in preparation and under review to carry them through the peer review process. We will also continue to improve the models through comparison against edge-of-field monitoring data and address some of the greatest data and model gaps outlined by the stakeholder process.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? In a continued stakeholder-driven, multiple-modeling collaboration, we identified more feasible scenarios that would be adopted across agricultural lands that comprise ~80% of the watershed. We then analyzed scenarios with future climate inputs to understand how discharge and management needs may change with variations in precipitation and temperature. Presently we are documenting the process and preparing three articles for submission to peer reviewed journals (Martin et al., in preparation; Kujawa et al., in preparation; Kalcic et al., in preparation). We have also begun work on projects in continuation and expansion on this theme. First, we are focusing on critical hydrology model improvements needed to more accurately simulate the effect of BMPs in western Lake Erie's watersheds, including linking soil health improvements to soil physical properties in the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT), a watershed model used to simulate the effects of BMPs on water quality. Second, we are expanding our stakeholder-driven approach to engage with nutrient service providers (NSPs), such as agronomists and certified crop advisors who provide technical assistance to producers in fertilizer management at a field scale. This public-private partnership will be used to implement BMPs on farm fields with elevated phosphorus levels, and we will assess the outcomes with edge-of-field monitoring and simulate scaling up of the approach with the SWAT model. Additional peer-reviewed publications related to water quality and agricultural BMPs in the western Lake Erie watersheds include a review paper on BMPs beyond the farm field (Kalcic et al., 2018), analysis on farmer adoption of cover crops (Burnett et al., 2018), guidance on what we currently know about solving Lake Erie harmful algal blooms (Wilson et al., in press), reporting of edge-of-field monitoring of soluble nutrients traveling through subsurface drains (Pease et al., 2018), and documenting improvements in understanding and simulating manure management (Long et al., 2018; Kast et al., in review; Kast et al., in preparation). Further, we are moving toward understanding how urban nutrient loading impacts the western Lake Erie basin with (1) a study on how urban land uses affects water quality (with particular focus on nutrients), and (2) several studies on urban BMP performance and modeling. Publications have been developed out of these efforts and will continue to be developed in the coming years (Søberg et al. 2019; Winston et al. 2019).

Publications

  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Dagnew, A.; Scavia, D.; Wang, Y.; Muenich, R.; Long, C.; Kalcic, M. (2019). Modeling Flow, Nutrient, and Sediment Delivery from a Large International Watershed Using a Field-Scale SWAT Model. Journal of the American Water Resources Association. doi:10.1111/1752-1688.12779.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Dagnew, A.; Scavia, D.; Wang, Y.; Muenich, R.; Kalcic, M. (2019). Modeling phosphorus reduction strategies from the international St. Clair-Detroit River system watershed. Journal of Great Lakes Research, 45 (4), 742-751. doi:10.1016/j.jglr.2019.04.005
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Guo, T., Nisbet, E.C., and Martin, J.F. (2019). Identifying mechanisms of environmental decision-making: How ideology and geographic proximity influence public support for managing agricultural runoff to curb harmful algal blooms in Lake Erie. Journal of Environmental Management: 241. 264-272.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Kalcic, M.; Muenich, R.L.; Basile, S.; Steiner, A.; Kirchhoff, C.; Scavia, D. (2019). Climate Change and Nutrient Loading in the Western Lake Erie Basin: Warming Can Counteract a Wetter Future. Environmental Science and Technology, 53 (13), 7543-7550. doi:10.1021/acs.est.9b01274.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Awaiting Publication Year Published: 2019 Citation: Kast, J.B., Long, C.M., Muenich, R.L., Martin, J.F., and Kalcic, M.M. (2019). Manure Management at Ohio Confined Animal Feeding Facilities in the Maumee River Watershed. Journal of Great Lakes Research. In Press.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Long, C. M., Muenich, R. L., Kalcic, M. M., & Scavia, D. (2018) Use of manure nutrients from concentrated animal feeding operations. Journal of Great Lakes Research. 44(2), 245-252.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Pease, L. A., Fausey, N. R., Martin, J. F., & Brown, L. C. (2018). Weather, Landscape, and Management Effects on Nitrate and Soluble Phosphorus Concentrations in Subsurface Drainage in the Western Lake Erie Basin. Transactions of the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers. 61(1): 223-232.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Purvis, R.A., Winston, R.J., Hunt, W.F., Narayanaswamy, K., Lipscomb, B., McDaniel, A., Lauffer, M., and Libes, S. (2019). Evaluating the hydrologic benefits of a bioswale in Brunswick County, NC. Water. 11(6), 1291.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Purvis, R., Winston, R.J., Hunt, W.F., Lipscomb, B., Narayanaswamy, K., McDaneil, A., and Lauffer, M. (2018). Evaluating the water quality benefits of a bioswale treating stormwater in Brunswick County, NC. Water. 10(2), 134. 10.3390/w10020134.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2017 Citation: Scavia, D., Kalcic, M., Muenich, R.L., Read, J., Aloysius*, N., Arnold, J., Boles, C., Confessor, R., Gildow*, M., Martin, J., Redder, T., Sowa, S., & Yen, H. (2017). Multiple models guide strategies for agricultural nutrient load reductions. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. 15(3), 126132.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: S�berg, L., Winston, R.J., Viklander, M., and Blecken, G.T. (2019). Dissolved metal adsorption capacities and fractionation in filter materials for use in stormwater bioretention facilities. Water Research. 4, 100032.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Wilson, R.S., Beetstra, M., Reutter, J.M., Hesse, G., DeVanna Fussell, K.M., Johnson, L.T., King, K.W., LaBarge, G.A., Martin, J.F. and Winslow, C. (2018). Achieving phosphorus reduction targets for Lake Erie. Journal of Great Lakes Research. 45: 4-11.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Winston, R.J., Powell, J.T., and Hunt, W.F. (2019). Evaluating the hydrologic effects of retrofitting a vegetated swale with rock check dams. Urban Water Journal. 6, 403-468. DOI: 10.1080/1573062X.2018.1455881.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Winston, R.J., Dorsey, J.D., Smolek, A.P., and Hunt, W.F. (2018). Hydrologic performance of four permeable pavements situated over clayey soils in northern Ohio. Journal of Hydrologic Engineering. 23(4), 04018007
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Burnett, E., Wilson, R. S., Heeren, A., & Martin, J. (2018) Farmer adoption of cover crops in the western Lake Erie basin. Journal of Soil and Water Conservation. 73(2), 143-155.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Carmen Lemos, M.; Wolske, K. S.; Rasmussen, L.V.; Arnott, J.; Kalcic, M.; Kirchhoff, C.J. (2019) The closer, the better? Untangling scientist-practitioner engagement, interaction, and knowledge use. Weather, Climate and Society, 11, 535-548. DOI:.10.1175/WCAS-D-18-0075.1.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Cizek, A.R., Hunt, W.F., Winston, R.J., Waickowski, S.E., Narayanaswamy, K., and Lauffer, M.S. (2018). Water Quality and Hydrologic Performance of a Regenerative Stormwater Conveyance (RSC) in the Piedmont of North Carolina. Journal of Environmental Engineering. 144(8), 04018062


Progress 11/21/17 to 09/30/18

Outputs
Target Audience:The target audiences include researchers working on hydrology and water quality problems, regional agricultural and environmental stakeholders and advocates, and policy-makers who are working on cleaning up Lake Erie's inflowing waters while maintaining agricultural productivity. Changes/Problems:We have filled out the paperwork to add Dr. Ryan Winston as a co-director on this project, he has now joined the faculty and is collaborating with us on this project. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Graduate students, post-doctoral scholars, and faculty have all attended and presented their research at conferences, including: the Water Management Association of Ohio 46th Annual Conference in Columbus, OH during November, 2017; the American Geophysical Union 2017 Fall Meeting in New Orleans, LA during December, 2017; the Society for Freshwater Science Annual Meeting in Detroit, MI during May, 2018; American Ecological Engineering Society Annual Meeting in Houston, Texas during June, 2018; the International Association of Great Lakes Research Annual Conference in Toronto, Canada during June, 2018; and the American Society of Agricultural Engineers Annual International Meeting in Detroit, MI during August, 2018. Graduate students, post-doctoral scholars, and faculty also attended and presented in the Understanding Algal Blooms: State of the Science Conference in Toledo, OH on September 13, 2018. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Researchers have presented findings to the broader research community through the conferences listed above. They have also presented findings to local and regional stakeholders through invited presentations by Ohio's Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Agriculture, targeted meetings through Ohio State University's College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences, and through three workshops with a stakeholder advisory group composed of experts and advocates in agricultural, environmental, and policy sectors. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?Now that we have several mature research products, our main goal in the coming year is to publish the findings from this work in peer-reviewed journals. We will continue working on the articles that are in preparation and under review to carry them through the peer review process. We will also continue to improve the models through comparison against edge-of-field monitoring data and address some of the greatest data and model gaps outlined by the stakeholder process.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? In a continued stakeholder-driven, multiple-modeling collaboration, we identified feasible scenarios that would likely be adopted across agricultural lands that comprise ~80% of the watershed. We then analyzed scenarios with future climate inputs to understand how discharge and management needs may change with variations in precipitation and temperature. Presently we are documenting the process and preparing three articles for submission to peer reviewed journals (Martin et al., in preparation; Kujawa et al., in preparation; Kalcic et al., in preparation). We have begun work on additional projects in continuation and expansion of these goals. First, we are focusing on critical hydrology model improvements needed to more accurately simulate the effect of BMPs in western Lake Erie's watersheds, including linking soil health improvements to soil physical properties in the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT), a watershed model used to simulate the effects of BMPs on water quality. Second, we are expanding our stakeholder-driven approach to engage with nutrient service providers (NSPs), such as agronomists and certified crop advisors who provide technical assistance to producers in fertilizer management at a field scale. This public-private partnership will be used to implement BMPs on farm fields with elevated phosphorus levels, and we will assess the outcomes with edge-of-field monitoring and simulate the scaling up of the approach with the SWAT model. Additional peer-reviewed publications related to water quality and agricultural BMPs in the western Lake Erie watersheds include a review paper on BMPs beyond the farm field (Kalcic et al., 2018), analysis on farmer adoption of cover crops (Burnett et al., 2018), guidance on what we currently know about solving Lake Erie harmful algal blooms (Wilson et al., in press), reporting of edge-of-field monitoring of soluble nutrients traveling through subsurface drains (Pease et al., 2018), and documenting improvements in understanding and simulating manure management (Long et al., 2018; Kast et al., in review; Kast et al., in preparation)

Publications

  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Wilson, R. S., Beetstra, M. A., Reutter, J. M., Hesse, G., DeVanna Fussell, K. M., Johnson, L. T., King, K. W., LaBarge, G. A., Martin, J. F., & Winslow, C. (In press) Achieving phosphorus reduction targets for Lake Erie. Journal of Great Lakes Research.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Submitted Year Published: 2018 Citation: Kast, J., Long, C., Muenich, R., Martin, J., & Kalcic, M. (In review) Manure Management at Ohio Confined Animal Feeding Facilities in the Maumee River Watershed. Submitted to Journal of Great Lakes Research.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Pease, L. A., Fausey, N. R., Martin, J. F., & Brown, L. C. (2018). Weather, Landscape, and Management Effects on Nitrate and Soluble Phosphorus Concentrations in Subsurface Drainage in the Western Lake Erie Basin. Transactions of the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers. 61(1): 223-232.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Long, C. M., Muenich, R. L., Kalcic, M. M., & Scavia, D. (2018) Use of manure nutrients from concentrated animal feeding operations. Journal of Great Lakes Research. 44(2), 245-252
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Burnett, E., Wilson, R. S., Heeren, A., & Martin, J. (2018) Farmer adoption of cover crops in the western Lake Erie basin. Journal of Soil and Water Conservation. 73(2), 143-155.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2017 Citation: Scavia, D., Kalcic, M., Muenich, R.L., Read, J., Aloysius*, N., Arnold, J., Boles, C., Confessor, R., Gildow*, M., Martin, J., Redder, T., Sowa, S., & Yen, H. (2017) Multiple models guide strategies for agricultural nutrient load reductions. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. 15(3), 126132.