Priority Area: Stewarding land and water resources
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Seeking solutions to groundwater contamination in agricultural communities: Strategic study of factors influencing contaminant transport from the land surface into aquifers
Groundwater contamination is a threat to dairy farms in Wisconsin for a variety of reasons. This project will study contaminant leaching and transport under different cropping and nutrient management practices.…
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Environmental test chamber: Control growing conditions for plants and seedlings
PI: Veronica Justen Justen is a professor of crop science at UW–River Falls. Her interests include plant breeding, field crop production, and enhancing diversified crop rotations with cover crops and…
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Novel dairy cropping systems to enhance economic and environmental resilience of Wisconsin dairy farms
Cover crops are a best management practice shown to have positive impacts on land and water resources by minimizing soil and nutrient loss from agricultural lands. Cover crop options for…
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Water quality, nitrogen use efficiency, and soil health: The shovel-ready projects of the UW-Discovery Farms
The UW–Discovery Farms program was established in 2001 to conduct edge-of-field water quality monitoring on farms in Wisconsin. Since then, it has expanded into on-farm assessment of nitrogen use efficiency…
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Mobile maps for better manure management
Wisconsin dairy farms are already addressing the challenge of applying manure in economically and environmentally sound ways using the UW’s Soil Nutrient Application Planner (SnapPlus) software linked with SnapMaps. SnapMaps…
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Reducing lifecycle environmental impacts and improving profitability of Wisconsin dairy systems through improved cropping management
Agricultural soils are continuously degrading and about 70% of the carbon of agricultural soils has been lost worldwide due to soil erosion and unsustainable management practices. This project will assess…
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Bringing artificial intelligence to the dairy barn
Farms have relied on human vision to observe and interpret animal behavior. As farm sizes increase and labor changes, it is more challenging to rely on human observations. The goal…
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Local virtual enclosures to enforce managed grazing
Chris Wilson rotates his grazing dairy herd by manually moving lightweight fencing, which is cumbersome. Digital solutions for confining livestock exist, involving use of GPS collars. However, these systems are…
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Green ammonia recovery from manure digester and lagoon by electrodialysis
Human expansion and intervention in the nitrogen cycle has led to a “lossy” system, particularly in manure handling. The ammonium ion is moveable using electrical fields similar to electrodialysis. This…
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Efficacy of manure nutrient prediction and variable rate technology to improve nutrient use efficiency on Wisconsin dairy farms
Manure is a valuable resource for maintaining soil fertility on Wisconsin dairy farms. However, over-application causes soils to become saturated with nutrients, which can lead to surface and groundwater contamination.…
