Left to right: Bruce Bearinger, FFA advisor, and FFA chapter members Ryan Boies, Chelsea Bearbower, Alex Brown, Jacob Zuck, and Michael Corkery.

Brandon, Iowa – For the second year, Jesup High School FFA students are helping Lime Creek watershed producers by gathering short samples of cornstalks.

Ten of the chapter’s 30 students are traveling gravel roads of the 24-square mile watershed with FFA advisor Bruce Bearinger, making stops at participating farms to walk into corn fields, select individual plants and cut an eight-inch section from the stalk near the base.  Fifteen eight-inch stalk sections make up a sample; most participating producers have two to four samples taken.  Once the samples are collected, they are cleaned of leaves, packaged and sent to an Iowa testing lab for analysis.  The results are returned to the FFA chapter, which collates the results for the Lime Creek watershed council and cooperating producers.

Senior Chelsea Bearbower is chairing the chapter’s cornstalk sampling program, contacting participating producers to locate the field to be sampled.  The chapter secretary, she became involved in 2009 and was the only officer this year with experience so volunteered for the job.

This year the chapter will gather 36 samples, about three times the number taken last year.  The chapter is reimbursed by the watershed council on per-farm basis and uses the project as a fund-raiser.

“My students and I find the program very valuable to all our FFA members,” says Bearinger, who also was involved with the watershed prior to becoming the FFA advisor.  “It has been a bit hectic this year with many more samples and an early harvest, but we see this as a good sign as the farmers in the watershed are seeing the value of the program.”

The end-of-season cornstalk nitrate test measures how well corn plants have used nitrogen (N) and can be an excellent way to determine if a corn crop had adequate N late in the growing season.  The test measures nitrate concentrations in the lower portion of cornstalks at the end of the growing season.

As producers plan for the fall harvest and for next year, they can use the end-of-season cornstalk nitrate test to help make crop management decisions as well as analyze their financial bottom line.

The basis of the test is that a corn plant suffering from inadequate N availability removes N from the lower cornstalk and leaves during grain filling.  If the plant has more N than needed for maximum yield, nitrate accumulates in the lower stalks at the end of the season.

In terms of the stalk analysis, low stalk nitrate N levels are indicated by less than 250 parts per million (ppm); the marginal range of 250-700 ppm indicates a level close to the minimal amount needed by the crop but grain yield may not be reduced.  The optimum rate of 700-2,000 ppm indicates that N availability was close to the rate needed by the plant while levels in excess of 2,000 ppm indicate a high probability that there was more N than needed.

Lime Creek is a subwatershed of the Cedar River in southwestern Buchanan County.  The headwaters of the creek are between Independence and Jesup and the creek enters the Cedar River in Benton County near Brandon.

Lime Creek watershed in northeast Iowa.

The Lime Creek watershed council is now in its fifth year.  A three-year Iowa Watershed Improvement Board grant to the council ran out last year but the council is using Iowa Corn Growers funds for cornstalk nitrate testing.

 

 

Bill Meyer

 

DYERSVILLE — The end-of-season cornstalk nitrate test measures how well corn plants have used nitrogen (N) and can be an excellent way to determine if a corn crop had adequate nitrogen late in the growing season.  The test measures nitrate concentrations in the lower portion of the cornstalks at the end of the growing season.

As producers plan for the fall harvest, they can use the EOS cornstalk nitrate test to help make crop management decisions as well as analyze their financial bottom line.

Producers in the North Fork Maquoketa and Hewitt Creek watersheds near Dyersville have the chance to get cornstalk nitrate sampling done through the watersheds’ incentive programs.

Bill Meyer of Dyersville will again collect samples and send them to the lab for watershed participants who choose to use the program.  Signup is at the watershed council meetings held in August.

The basis of the test is straightforward.  If a corn plant is suffering from inadequate N availability, it removes N from the lower cornstalks and leaves during grain filling. If the plant has more N than needed for maximum yields, nitrate accumulates in the lower stalks at the end of the season. Producers can use this information to determine if their corn crop had adequate N late in the growing season.

Taking the samples is straightforward.  Fifteen eight-inch sections (the stalk is cut at six and 14 inches above the soil for each stalk sample) of cornstalks are taken one to three weeks after kernel black layer has formed, and sent to an appropriate laboratory to be sampled for nitrate content.

For participating producers in the two watersheds, the test results are returned both to the producer and to the staff at the Iowa State University Extension Performance-based watershed projects in Fayette.  The staff use the results to construct a watershed-wide snapshot – without producer names – for discussion at the watershed council meetings.

Test results are easy to interpret.  If the test results are less than 700 parts per million (ppm), N levels may have been inadequate. If they are above 2,000 ppm, N levels were probably more than needed. Levels between 700-2,000 ppm indicate optimal N availability to the crop.  When used over a number of years, the stalk nitrate test can help refine N management.

Meyer, who has a degree in crop science from the University of Illinois, started taking cornstalk samples for the Hewitt Creek watershed in 2005.  He said it was a natural move to assist with the North Fork watershed council program.

Project cooperators are charged for the sampling, $60 for the first two and then $25 for each additional sample, part of which is reimbursed if they are participating in the watershed incentive program.

Meyer says he needs to know the cropping history of the field to be sampled and whether the corn will be harvested as silage or shelled corn.  He also estimates yield while in the field collecting stalk samples.

North Fork Maquoketa watershed producers who are interested in trying this test may contact Meyer, David Krapfl, North Fork council chairman, Jeff Pape, Hewitt council chairman, or the Iowa State University Extension Performance-based Watershed Projects office, 563 425-3233.

For more information on collecting cornstalk NO3 samples, click on:

stalk NO3 sampling

Leah Medley (left), Iowa coordinator for the EPA Region 7 office in Kansas City, listens to Gene Langel, Brian Hermsen, Randy Lansing and Carl Mensen discuss farming and water quality issues following a recent North Fork Maquoketa watershed council meeting.

NEW VIENNA – Why do producer-cooperators in the North Fork Maquoketa River watershed participate in their water quality project?  Mostly because they have a say in project activities.

At least that’s what a group recently told Leah Medley, coordinator of 319 projects in Iowa for the EPA’s Region 7 office in Kansas City, when she attended a recent watershed project council meeting in New Vienna.

Medley, who has a background in biology, has been with EPA about one year and was in Iowa visiting projects funded by the federal Clean Water Act Section 319 and some projects funded by other sources.

North Fork Maquoketa Watershed Project is funded by Iowa’s Watershed Improvement Review Board (WIRB) and is a performance-based water quality project.  Section 319 funding projects are overseen by the Iowa Department of Natural Resources.

Performance-based projects have a different approach to water quality in that producers within the watershed are involved in decision-making from the start, deciding which farm management practices they want as part of the project.  They can also decide which practices they want to adapt on their own farm.

“I’m interested in learning what makes you come to the project (meetings),” Medley told the group.

“It’s voluntary,” some members told her. “We are doing what we want to do and there’s not someone (else) over there with a measuring stick.”

The producer-cooperators said they feel landowners are in the best position to know which management practices will work on their own farm.  They also said they feel many standards attached to federally-funded projects are over-engineered and too costly for their farms.

Performance-based watershed projects emphasize local involvement and use various tools to measure the effectiveness of farm management practices that producers use to reduce nitrogen, phosphorus and soil losses on their farms.

Producers receive a relatively small incentive to use various practices on their farms.  These include N, P, and manure management and land-based practices like installing or improving waterways.

In addition to visiting the North Fork watershed council meeting, Medley also attended a Mississippi River Basin Initiative meeting held in Dyersville, and visited county Soil and Water Conservation District offices involved in 319 projects and Iowa State University water quality staff in Ames and Fayette.

By Jean Caspers-Simmet

NASHUA, Iowa —A bioreactor built a little over a year ago at Iowa State University’s Northeast Research Farm near Nashua will help researchers decide how best to build such structures to remove nitrogen from subsurface agricultural drainage water.

Farmers got to see the bioreactor and its water monitoring equipment at a recent field day on the research farm.

Chad Ingels, ISU Extension Watershed Project specialist, explained that the bioreactor’s purpose is to reduce nitrates in water to improve its quality.

“Water flows into the bioreactor from the tile line, through the woodchips, and back out to a tile line,” Ingels said. “Anaerobic bacteria feed off the carbon from the woodchips that fill the bioreactor and convert nitrates into a gaseous form of nitrogen by using the oxygen part of the nitrate. It functions similar to a wetland in this respect.”

Finished Biofilter

The bioreactor is placed near a tile outlet or further into a field. Most are conveniently placed in a waterway or grass strip. A water control structure diverts tile water into the bioreactor, but when tile water flow exceeds capacity it allows water to bypass the bioreactor.

The Nashua bioreactor is 120 feet long, up to 15 feet wide and 3.5 feet deep. In cross section it is trapezoidal-shaped, wider at the top than the bottom. It is filled with two semi-loads of wood chips, the food source for bacteria. Landscape fabric is placed over the top of the wood chips and a foot of soil is layered over that.

Cost varies depending on the drainage area being treated, Ingels said. Costs will likely exceed $2,500 for woodchips, control structures, backhoe work and tiling supplies. The Nashua bioreactor cost $15,000, but at least half of that amount was water monitoring equipment, which generally wouldn’t be needed, Ingels said.

The Nashua bioreactor includes two large black culverts not ordinarily a part of a bioreactor. These are used for viewing and research purposes.

The Coldwater/Palmer Watershed Council sponsored installation of the bioreactor after approaching the research farm board and researchers about the need for evaluating the efficiency of bioreactors in northeast Iowa.

The Nashua structure will be used to gather data about bioreactors, how they are constructed and if they are effective. The limited information that is available shows anywhere from 10 percent to 90 percent nitrate removal depending on many variables — including age, Ingels said.

The life expectancy of a bioreactor is estimated to be 10 years, although more research is needed on that as well.

ISU researchers are measuring the amount of water flowing through the bioreactor and monitoring the amount of nitrate in the water going into and out of the Nashua bioreactor. They will also study the degradation of the wood chips.

“This is the most fully equipped site in Iowa to gather the information we need,” Ingels said.

Research farm superintendent Ken Pecinovsky said there is a nitrate removal wetland about a mile away from the bioreactor, which he hopes that they can monitor if research dollars can be found. In addition, the bioreactor is near the farm’s extensive nitrogen water monitoring site.

“This is a nice complement to that work,” Pecinovsky said.

Link to orginal article: http://www.agrinews.com/nashua/research/farm/studying/bioreactor/story-2733.htm

Filling Bioreactor

Luther College water quality research team collects and tests samples of water at a stream that flows through The Cut on the west edge of Decorah.  Working in cooperation with Iowa State University Extension, and the Iowa Department of Natural resources, the Luther team are (left to right) Chelsea Weiss of Eldridge, Iowa, a sophomore majoring in biology and political science, Jodi Enos-Berlage, Ph.D., Luther professor of biology, and Sharon Heyer of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, a senior majoring in biology and Spanish.

DECORAH, Iowa – On an early June day, Jodi Enos-Berlage, Ph.D., Luther College professor of biology, and two Luther students are hiking waist-high in weeds looking for old paths giving access to Dry Run Creek near Decorah.

The three are checking on the health of Dry Run and Twin Springs creeks, dropping probes in the water and taking water samples.

Sharon Heyer of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, a senior biology and Spanish major, and Chelsea Weiss of Eldridge, Iowa, a sophomore biology and political science major, are with Professor Enos-Berlage today. Both have made one previous trip to the watershed.

Rain the day before provided the reason to be outdoors – the increased water flow may yield significant data.  But the recent, frequent rains also present a minor but annoying problem.

Nearly all sampling sites – there are 10 in all – are a short hike from the roads but paths to the sites are already overgrown with weeds, including some plants the samplers would like to avoid.  For consistency, they want to take samples at the same location each trip, but access and appearance of some sites has changed in a short time.

Today they find the streams are running higher than normal but not muddier.  Many parameters don’t appear too far from norms.  They get immediate numbers on turbidity (amount of sediment suspended in the water), pH (acidity or base level), temperature, dissolved oxygen, conductivity and chloride level.

This is the fourth time this spring the Luther crew is making the circuit of sampling sites.  The schedule calls for once-a-month trips  but they also go out following a rain event producing at least one-half inch – if it happens during the first half of the week.

The Dry Run Creek sampling/testing program represents a partnership between Luther College, Iowa State Extension, and the Iowa Department of Natural Resources to establish some baseline data for the recently formed Dry Run Creek Watershed Improvement Association, Inc., a group of watershed landowners.

In time, the results should help watershed producers establish a set of management practices to improve water quality.

Water quality testing is a new effort in Dry Run watershed, but not for Luther College. Professor Enos-Berlage’s biology faculty predecessors John Tjostem and Jim Eckblad, both now retired, were involved in water quality testing, including numerous streams and many northeast Iowa wells.

Current Dry Run watershed efforts began last year with some initial contacts through letters among landowners seeking ways they could cooperate on water quality practices in the watershed.  Dry Run Creek is currently classified as impaired by the IDNR’s 308(d) report – the specific impairment is high bacteria levels.  In January of this year the producers group decided to initiate water monitoring – Enos-Berlage and her family coincidentally own and operate a small farm in the watershed.

About the same time Ben Kuennen, watershed specialist with Iowa State University Extension’s watershed projects office in Fayette, contacted the head of the biology department at Luther seeking cooperation in a water-monitoring program for the watershed.  That contact was passed on to Enos-Berlage, as the microbiologist in the department.

“I became interested for multiple reasons,” Enos-Berlage says, beyond living in the watershed and getting the letter.  She grew up on a 350-acre cow-calf farm in Illinois and her husband has a dairy background.  Her interests in agriculture, science, and the environment are reflected in the goals of this watershed improvement project.

The project is also attractive to Enos-Berlage as a science educator (she’s in her 10th year as a faculty member in the Luther biology department).  “The project aligns well with Luther’s sustainability mission,” she said.  “Luther has taken a lead role in sustainability initiatives among educational institutions, and participating in a local project aimed at preserving and protecting a natural resource definitely falls within this realm.”

Luther continues to develop various environmental and sustainability programs, and environmental topics are common in the classroom–thus a sampling program in Dry Run would offer opportunities for the school.

Enos-Berlage plans to incorporate the Dry Run Creek Watershed monitoring into her fall microbiology course.  In fact, she is designing a new laboratory exercise for her 100-student course that will include a field trip to at least one Dry Run monitoring site, followed by sampling and analysis back in the laboratory.

Students aren’t expected to remain on campus during summer, Enos-Berlage explains, but Luther is providing funding for Chelsea and Sharon to do the water sampling as directed research.  In addition, they spend time  working on research with an evolutionary biologist and maintaining biology department equipment.  Both students made visits to a Dry Run landowners meeting in mid-June to discuss their monitoring work and early results.  Later this summer, Chelsea and Sharon will also begin work with an entomologist to analyze the benthic (bottom-dwelling) invertebrates in select locations of Dry Run Creek, as these organisms can also be useful indicators of stream health.

Luther students, Lisa Hieb, a senior biology major from Brookings, S.D., and Jacob Seibert, a junior biology major from Rockford, Iowa, were involved earlier in the spring with the water monitoring project and will continue when they return to campus in the fall.

Students working on the project during the semester will receive class credit for the sampling, and Enos-Berlage explains other benefits. The monitoring program “is very data rich,” she says, “(and it) provides tangible undergraduate research projects with real-world applications.”  There is no individual “ownership” of the information, so any student working on the project can perform analysis of the data, perhaps applying the research towards their required senior project.

Dry Run’s monitoring program examines 10 different parameters, but five samples – E. coli bacteria, ammonia, nitrite and nitrate, total nitrogen, and total phosphorus – must be sent to the University Hygienic Lab in Iowa City for testing, so they collect vials of water.

Mailing water samples to UHL has limitations – sampling must be done in the first half of the week to allow time for the samples to reach the lab in time for testing, which precludes watershed trips Thursday to Sunday.

Enos-Berlage and Lynette Seigley, a research geologist with the IDNR’s water monitoring and assessment section, are working on establishing protocols for the sampling that would let the college do all the work in house.

“We have that interest for a couple of reasons,” Enos-Berlage says, including “we want to be involved in the laboratory analysis and have our students experience this aspect of the work.”  In addition, doing the lab analysis at Luther would allow more timing flexibility for the rain event sampling and would likely save on costs.

Dry Run watershed with monitoring sites marked in red.

The monitoring trips usually begin near where Dry Run Creek joins the Upper Iowa.  The creek flows underneath Highway 52, confined to a concrete spillway through an area known as “the cut.”  Dry Run and Twin Springs creeks join within a city campground before they flow into the Upper Iowa River, making it easy to sample both with one stop.  It’s a pleasant morning, there are many campers in the park and there’s just a short walk between the two sites.

Dry Run Creek watershed is a wedge of land totaling more than 20,000 acres between Iowa Highway 9 and U.S. 52.  Twin Springs Creek runs east to west just north of Highway 9.  Both watersheds are hilly and after the stop at the campground, the water sample trio heads out Highway 9 for the first rural site.

Both streams drain farmland along Highways 9 and 52, a mix of fields used for cropland and livestock.  The mix of water use, recreation and agriculture, is not unusual in the Midwest.  Dry Run Creek flows through a central outdoor recreational area in Decorah, specifically an intersection point of two major parks, two campgrounds, and hiking and biking trails, highlighting the concerns of those living in or near to the watershed or using the stream for recreation.

All sites were selected by Lynette Seigley and ISUE water projects staff to reflect the watersheds and provide appropriate results. Initially, they marked 20 sites but that number was pared to 10 high priority sites.  A few sites are on tributaries of both creeks and Enos-Berlage explains they might add other sites if data present results that call for additional testing.

Enos-Berlage is enthusiastic about what the data can provide: “The big picture is that I think the data will help producers decide where to make land improvements (to get the most benefit) and support grant proposals to obtain the funds to do it.”

GREENE — Lloyd Stauffer has a nearly proprietary interest in Lower Coldwater and Palmer Creek watersheds.

His family has lived on the same farm for 74 of his 75 years.  Almost all of the farmland drains northeast into Coldwater; 5 acres near the farmstead drain to the south, under the road, into Palmer Creek.

“I guess I kind of know the creeks, I guess I’ve seen it all,” he says, more explanation than boast.

Lower Coldwater Creek sprawls across northern Butler County near Greene.  Its course is easy to follow, defined by woodlands now green with new spring growth.  Coldwater Creek begins near Rockwell and meanders about 24 miles (as birds fly) southeast to flow into the Shell Rock River near Greene; the Shell Rock is a tributary of the Cedar River.

Lloyd Stauffer fills a sample bottle with water taken from Coldwater Creek at site 2, Hickory Avenue in early May. The water sample is sent to the Iowa Hygienic Lab for testing. Stauffer has been gathering samples since 2006.

Lower Coldwater, about half the length of Coldwater, and Palmer Creek, a much smaller, losing stream that joins the former near where they enter the Shell Rock, are paired in a 39,120-acre watershed project now in its fourth year.

Both watersheds were designated as impaired in the 2004 list of Section 303(d) waters.  The watershed council responded by electing to monitor the creeks initially at four sites.

Stauffer got involved after attending the council meeting: “I’m kind of interested in conservation,” he says.  After discussing the issue with his wife, who has a background in biology and chemistry, he volunteered.
Since then has been traveling the blacktops and gravel roads, April through September, from the top of the watershed to the bottom to gather samples.  He’s averaged eight trips each year.

Stauffer has a water sampling routine.  Every two weeks, he contacts the University of Iowa Hygienic Lab in Iowa City for a testing kit, which arrives in a Styrofoam box about one foot square by 18 inches.  Inside are six small glass bottles with labels and paperwork.  This year, there are two new sites at a bioreactor installed last fall near the lower end he watershed.

Loading the sampling equipment into his Chevy pickup, he heads west on the gravel, over “Mt. Nebo,” a small but noticeable rise on the horizon that measures some 1,140 feet on a topographic map, then turns north to County Road C13 and northwesterly to a spot where Floydline Street crosses Coldwater Creek, the first sampling site.

Lloyd parks the pickup, takes a few minutes to pick out the correct sample bottle, grabs a larger mason jar tied to a long rope, then walks across the roadway to the south side of the bridge, where he drops the jar into the water, fills it with water and pulls it back up.  The first jarful is a rinse so he drops the jar back down to the creek, fills it again and draws it back up; this time pours the sample into the smaller sample bottle.

Back in the pickup, he selects the corresponding paperwork for this sample, makes some notes, then starts the engine and heads downstream to the next sampling site.

Before we started the tour he offered a few comments about the sampling results on Coldwater: nitrate nitrogen sampling numbers are usually the highest at the upstream site, he says, then drop as the creek flows southeast.  He speculates that the more intense farming upstream contributes to higher N numbers.

Coldwater and Palmer Creek watersheds with monitoring sites marked with red dots.

“As we go downstream there are more buffers and pasture,” he offers as an explanation.  (Looking at satellite images, the upper part of the stream appears to have fewer trees while the lower half has more woods and wider riparian areas.)  Palmer site, number 4, “usually runs about in the middle, maybe a little higher,” he says (in 2006 it was at the top with nitrate concentrations above 24 parts per million).  Because Palmer is a losing stream, sometimes there are no samples to be taken – the creekbed is dry.

Sampling site 2, Hickory (named after the road), is heavily wooded as is Lacy (named after a nearby farmstead).  Access at both is easy, though.

This year the initial nitrate numbers are much lower, 12 and 11 ppm instead of 17-20 at the beginning of the year.  And Palmer Creek has been the lowest of the four.

A graph of the results resembles a map of the creek, in fact, sloping down from left to right.  As remarkable, the average of all results show a decline in nitrate numbers since 2006, from near 25 ppm for Palmer to around 14-16 ppm for all four sites.

As he nears the Palmer and tile line sites, Stauffer spots Dennis Cassman, Coldwater/Palmer watershed council treasurer who installed the bioreactor last year on his farm.  They discuss the bioreactor numbers, which are the lowest of the watershed after two test dates, and agree that it’s probably due to the April weather.  “We haven’t had a lot of rain this year, yet.”

The Cassman bioreactor sites are down the road a bit, approachable by driving in the ditch to a waterway then down the waterway to the middle of the section.  The bioreactor is less elaborate than earlier units installed in Coldwater/Palmer and other northeast Iowa watersheds; this one is about six by six by 100 feet, with a sampling tile line at the top and bottom.  Water in the bioreactor drains from about 100 acres of cropland.

Stauffer lowers a cup attached to a fishing rod into the water and removes three cupfuls to fill a sample bottle.

When he’s finished taking samples and filling in paperwork, he heads back to his farmstead, where he repackages the Styrofoam container with samples and icepacks then heads to the post office in Greene to send the samples to the IHL.  Some 10 days later, he gets the results which are entered into a computer spreadsheet program for later presentation to the watershed council.

In addition to providing numerical guidance for the watershed council, the results have provided spirited discussions, according to Chad Ingels, Iowa State University Extensions project advisor.

Nitrate sampling this year is funded by the Iowa Corn Growers, which also provided early funds to the watershed group.  The Coldwater/Palmer watershed also received a grant from the Iowa Watershed Improvement Fund for a three-year project that ended last year.