3. Discovery Farm?
Discovery farms are real-life Wisconsin
farms in different geographic areas facing
different environmental challenges.
Our goal is to better understand and reduce
the sources of phosphorus, nitrogen, and
other pollutants that may impair the surface
and groundwater.
Farms participate for 5-7 years
4. Mission Statement
The Discovery Farms Program
will develop on-farm and related
research to determine the
economic and environmental
effects of Best Management
Practices on a diverse group of
Wisconsin farms;
5. The Discovery Farms Program will develop on-farm and
related research to determine the economic and
environmental effects of Best Management Practices on
a diverse group of Wisconsin farms;
and educate and improve
communications among the
agricultural community,
consumers, researchers, and
policy-makers to better identify
and implement effective
environmental management
practices that are compatible
with profitable agriculture.
6. About UW-Discovery Farms
6 Core Farms
3 Special Project Farms
21 Monitoring Stations
Steering Committee
Education and Outreach
11. What else are we collecting?
Meteorological data:
precipitation, wind speed
and direction, air
temperature, solar
radiation, relative
humidity, soil moisture
and temperature
12. What have we learned?
Identified critical risk periods
Snowmelt, rain on snow/frozen ground
Non-frozen soils that are close to saturation.
All farms/farming systems have losses.
Tile drainage a major contributor in areas
Sediment losses are lower than expected.
13. Timing – Critical Runoff Periods
Mean-
Monthly
Runoff
Mean-Monthly Runoff
as a Percentage of
Annual Runoff
Runoff
Frequency
Total
Precip
Mean-Monthly Runoff
as a Percentage of Total
Precip
October 0.07 3% 23% 2.32 3%
November 0.02 <1% 15% 2.22 1%
December 0.04 1% 35% 1.73 2%
January 0.10 4% 50% 1.68 6%
February 0.41 16% 58% 1.48 28%
March 0.87 34% 100% 2.22 39%
April 0.11 4% 54% 3.42 3%
May 0.32 12% 38% 3.70 9%
June 0.48 19% 42% 3.83 13%
July 0.07 3% 42% 3.90 2%
August 0.07 3% 19% 3.55 2%
September <0.01 <1% 19% 2.76 <1%
18. So now what?
Discovery Farms is wrapping up a
number of sites.
Organizing and writing up the
results from the first nine projects
Move toward linking field and
stream monitoring
19. Discovery Watersheds
In-stream and in-field water quality monitoring
Providing information that helps farmers and their
advisors to make changes that protect water quality
Identify critical sites (contributors or major sinks)
Engage producers and their advisors in the identification
and adoption of practices which reduce losses
20. Nutrient management
Evaluate fields to identify critical sites
Relate edge-of-field losses to P – Index
Identify fields based on level of risk (timing
and location)
Low risk
Medium risk
High risk
21. Compare critical sites with other
methods of identification (LIDAR)
Look for alternative practices on
critical sites
Critical Sites
Equipment:
With regard to monitoring WI runoff
In order to compute losses (yields for ag) we need to get the water right! Most important thing to do is get the volume!!! For high accuracy data.
Water volume and it’s importance
These are all ancillary variables that can come into play when trying to make links between the landscape and what we measure in the water.
This is the “when” the runoff happens and leads into the why
