Precision Conservation

As a child, I remember watching documentaries where wildlife biologists would track grizzly bears through the wilds of Montana.  It always astonished me that scientists would risk their lives to tranquilize and collar a bear to track its whereabouts. Since those days, much has changed in our ability to tag and track locations.  Today we have geotags, data loggers, advanced mapping systems and even solar powered GPS ear tags to track animal habits. Technology has advanced to the point where we can monitor the movement of cattle within in herd, …

For the past few years, Dr. Dan Jaynes, USDA-Agriculture Research Service, and Dr. Tom Isenhart, Iowa State University, have been researching ways to remove nitrogen from tile water. Their research culminated in the development of saturated buffers, a new water protection practice. Saturated buffers rely on denitrifying bacteria to convert nitrates within the tile water to nitrogen gas, before the water is discharged into a water body. Jaynes and Isenhart have developed a method to intercept tile water that would otherwise flow directly into a …

For any country that wants to grow an adequate and stable food supply, some level of irrigation is necessary.  Even in the Upper Midwestern U.S., where there is ample rain-fed cropland, we count on irrigated acres to provide stable crop production, especially in drought years.  As recently as 1988 and 2012, corn and soybean yields in Iowa, Illinois, and Indiana tanked, because of droughts.  The U.S. food supply would have been on unstable ground in those years, without the irrigated areas in the Great Plains. The Ogallala Aquifer, underlying …

Late last year, Peggy and I were vacationing in Alabama.  Driving along Interstate 85, I noticed signs for Tuskegee, Alabama.  It took me a few miles to put things together, but I started to recall my history lesson about George Washington Carver and his passion for soil health.  In one of those unplanned side trips, Peggy and I exited I85 and toured the George Washington Carver Museum on the campus of Tuskegee University. The son of a slave woman, Carver was born into slavery, and spent his childhood in Missouri.  In 1888, Carver moved …

Do you remember The Jerk, a 1979 movie comedy?  In the movie, Navin R. Johnson (played by Steve Martin) is thrilled to find that his name is listed in the local phone book. Since the release of the book “Precision Conservation: Geospacial Techniques for Agricultural and Natural Resources Conservation” I find myself relating to this movie.  It is not that I am mentioned in the book, but my name is mentioned along with so many precision conservation superstars. The book consists of 17 chapters, each chapter written by leading researchers who …

As a conservation community, we spend very little effort on controlling the cost of soil and water conservation. Let’s face it, most of our efforts are spent on marketing conservation, working to increase funding, or fighting for or against regulations.  When was the last time you heard anyone discuss effective ways to reduce the cost of conservation? Any company knows that reducing cost, while maintaining the same quality, leads to more sales.  Conservation is no different.  If we expect farmers to install more conservation practices, we …