Recently added articles from Journal of Soil and Water Conservation:
Does community-supported agriculture support conservation?(EDITOR'S DESK)(Editorial)
Nov 01, 2007; ... As the "grow local/eat local" movement continues to gain momentum and visibility, conservationists may wonder about its relationship with natural resource conservation and the environment. Growing local encompasses a broad range of traditional and innovative farm-to-consumer ...
New mindset needed for managing our soil.(Readers' forum)(Letter to the editor)
Nov 01, 2007; ... I recently read Managing Agricultural Landscapes for Environmental Quality and greatly appreciated the insightful articles. But I must say that I read very little about leading a change in managing our soil. We seem to continue the old mindset of focusing on the loss of the soil ...
Another chapter in life-long learning.(Readers' forum)(Brief article)
Nov 01, 2007; ... Thank you for your review of the book Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations. I read the book and found it quite interesting, educational, eye opening, and just a bit alarming. David R. Montgomery sure packed a lot in it. There's much I wish I had known when I started with the USDA Soil ...
Answers sought for floodplain management.(Readers' forum)(Letter to the editor)
Nov 01, 2007; ... Your recent journal issue was exceptional in terms of the information it provided of surface water management. Our situation with our tributary streams in southeastern Minnesota and the management of their floodplains has been a concern, particularly with the impact of the very ...
A very good year.(HOME FRONT)
Nov 01, 2007; ... This is the time of year I begin thinking about what we did this year as the first step toward planning and budgeting for next year. If I say so myself, 2007 was a very good year. We made important improvements in the ongoing work we do every year. We brought on new leadership ...
Conservation issues of yesterday, today, and tomorrow.(US PERSPECTIVE)(Critical essay)
Nov 01, 2007; ... As an older member of the Soil and Water Conservation Society, I am intrigued, challenged, and sometimes overwhelmed by the nature and diversity of issues that the society is addressing today. Moving from one session to another at the 2007 annual conference, I was both impressed and ...
Rising to the challenge of Hugh Hammond Bennett.(INT'L PERSPECTIVE)(Critical essay)
Nov 01, 2007; ... I have been involved in soil and water conservation for nearly 50 years. My interest in this subject was kindled as a child when I was brought up on a small, mixed farm in rural Australia. At agricultural college I was deeply impressed by the soil conservation staff that we met--by their ...
Thaler Land and Livestock, Wyoming.(CONSERVATIONIST PROFILE)
Nov 01, 2007 ... The Thaler ranch and farm began as a homestead claimed by Dennis Thaler's great-great uncle, Joe Matje, a Hungarian immigrant. Today' the Thalers' combination farm and ranch is a cow/calf-yearling operation. The Thalers also raise small grains, wheat, oats, millet, and alfalfa-grass hay ....
Runoff from potato farms blamed for fish kills on Canadian island.(IN THE NEWS)(Prince Edward Island)
Nov 01, 2007; ... With thousands of dead fish--including salmon, speckled trout, and rainbow trout--two fish kills in Prince Edward Island's Dunk and Tryon Rivers in the summer of 2007 serve as a wakeup call for better management of agricultural land in a Canadian province where potatoes are the largest ...
Heron Lake watershed conservation strip tillage demonstration.(CONSERVATION IN ACTION)(Report)
Nov 01, 2007; ... Because of a shared interest in preserving our soils and improving water quality, the Heron Lake Watershed District, North Heron Lake Game Producers Association, University of Minnesota Extension, Fairland Management, Alba Grain Inc., Vern Uit de Flesch, and Pietz Farms formed a ...
Ancient water systems provide lessons for today.(IDEAS & INNOVATIONS)(Report)
Nov 01, 2007; ... Arid regions supporting human populations appear to be expanding in many parts of the world. Competition for ever scarcer water resources is increasing in these regions. The situation is compounded by changing weather patterns, changes in patterns of land use, and increasing human ...
Soils and runaway global warming: terra incognita.(FEATURE)(Report)
Nov 01, 2007; ... Increasingly, the expression "global warming" is being replaced in the news media by the much more ominous one of "runaway global warming" (e.g., Hileman 2005; Brown 2006), auguring more or less explicitly the possible extinction of the human race in the not too distant future. Often, no ...
Strategies for soil conservation in no-tillage and organic farming systems.(FEATURE)(Report)
Nov 01, 2007; ... No-tillage cropping systems are known to provide many benefits to soils that can enhance production of grain crops. Many of the improvements to soils that result from no-tillage production such as increases in soil aggregation, water-holding capacity, nutrient cycling, and biological ...
Is setting aside highly erodible cropland for carbon storage economically viable?(TECH TRANSFER BRIEFING)(Report)
Nov 01, 2007; ... Research has been conducted to estimate the amount of carbon that can be stored in agricultural soils, but less is known about the economic value of that stored carbon. The objective of this study was to estimate the economic value of stored carbon that accumulates when agricultural land ...
Changes in carbon storage in inland saline-alkalined wetlands.(TECH TRANSFER BRIEFING)(Report)
Nov 01, 2007; ... Wetlands have the ability to sequester atmospheric carbon into peat or soil organic matter. They represent the largest component of the terrestrial biological carbon pool and may exert a large influence on global carbon cycles because they store about one-third of the global terrestrial ...
Phosphorus-based management challenges and strategies for poultry farming.(TECH TRANSFER BRIEFING)(Report)
Nov 01, 2007; ... Continued accelerated eutrophication of fresh waters caused by elevated phosphorus inputs places pressure on agriculture to implement phosphorus-based nutrient management strategies, particularly for confined animal feeding operations. As phosphorus-based strategies usually have a negative ...
The capacity of forested filter strips to retain sediment.(TECH TRANSFER BRIEFING)(Report)
Nov 01, 2007; ... Vegetated filter strips protect water quality by reducing the amount of sediment that reaches streams. Silvicultural filter strips typically differ from agricultural filter strips in that ground cover is provided by forest litter, not grass or other low vegetation, and slopes are typically ...
Evaluation of erosion control methods for storm water quality.(TECH TRANSFER BRIEFING)(Report)
Nov 01, 2007; ... Compost and mulch blankets have been widely used for slope stabilization and erosion control on construction sites. However, the majority of research on these erosion control blankets has failed to meet state or federal specifications for particle size distribution. The primary objective ...
Predictors of field-scale variation of soil phosphorus.(TECH TRANSFER BRIEFING)(Report)
Nov 01, 2007; ... Predictions of phosphorus loss from agricultural soils can be affected by field-scale variation in soil-test phosphorus (STP) and the degree of soil phosphorus saturation (DPS). Concentrations of soil phosphorus have been shown to vary significantly within farm fields due to factors such ...
An integrated economic-hydrologic framework for evaluating environmental effects and cost effectiveness of conservation programs and management practices.(TECH TRANSFER BRIEFING)(Report)
Nov 01, 2007; ... Conservation programs in Canada, the United States, and the European Union provide financial incentives to farmers for implementing beneficial management practices (BMPs) to mitigate the adverse environmental effects of agriculture. From a societal point of view, there is a need to ...