NRCS Air Quality in the News

Air Quality Workshop Focuses on 2002 Farm Bill Opportunities

From NRCS Technology News - November, 2002

A National Air Quality Workshop will be held in St. Louis, Missouri, on November 5-7, 2002. Workshop information will help NRCS employees better understand air quality responsibility under the Energy Bill and how to implement the NRCS air resource portion of the 2002 Farm Bill. Information gathered from this workshop will be used to help develop National Policy and Technology Guidance. Those who should attend are State Conservationists and two or three employees in each State with responsibility for programs, conservation planning, and operations.

For more information contact:

Trees Planted for Odor Management

From NRCS Technology News - September, 2002

Odors from animal facilities often cause complaints from nearby neighbors, even in a rural setting. NRCS Connecticut has developed their first conservation plan that uses tree planting between an animal waste storage pit and a neighboring residence to control odor from the pit. Using emerging technology in shelterbelts and animal waste odor control provided by the NRCS Air Quality Cooperating Scientists and the USDA Agroforestry Center, conservationists are working with landowners to plant rows of spruce trees on the predominant downwind side of the storage pit. The trees will reduce the downwind odor by intercepting many of the odor causing contaminants, including volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and particulate matter, and induce mixing of the atmospheric boundary layer through turbulent transfer. They will also provide a view more aesthetically pleasing than one of a pit full of manure, reducing the tendency of people nearby to smell with their eyes.

The NRCS RC&D coordinator for eastern Connecticut is working with NRCS air quality scientists to include air quality concerns into the NRCS planning and reporting system. This work contributes toward the recognition of air quality as an important resource, and it highlights the NRCS role in good things that can be done to manage air quality.

For more information, contact:

Carbon Sequestration Study Results Available

From NRCS Technology News - July/August, 2002

State-level assessments in Iowa, Indiana, and Nebraska detail how management decisions about cropping and tillage systems on 60 million acres of cropland are affecting soil organic matter. The objectives of these studies were to assess the rates of carbon sequestration that result from conservation practices and to provide locally relevant estimates and decision tools for evaluating the potential of alternative management strategies to sequester carbon in soils. Assessment results for the three states reveal that agricultural soils are sequestering 5.2 million metric tons of carbon per year–equivalent to removing 18.9 million metric tons of CO2 per year from the atmosphere–largely through increased adoption of conservation practices over the past 10 to 20 years. This is equivalent to 6 percent of all the fossil fuel combustion in the three states–an offset of 70,000 train cars of coal or 2.4 billion gallons of gasoline.

The assessments were conducted by NRCS in collaboration with Colorado State University (CSU). Our approach used a variety of resource data (climate, soils, land use, and management), long-term field experiment results, and the Century EcoSystem Soil Organic Matter Computer Model developed at CSU. A new survey instrument, the Carbon Sequestration Rural Appraisal, was developed to collect local data that captured the uniqueness of each state and the differences among all 284 counties. Using GIS (geographic information systems) and existing database of land use and soils, individual tailored spreadsheets were prepared for each county that detail existing land use and soils interactions. The CarbOn Management Evaluation Tool (COMET) databases for each county show century estimates for the millions of scenarios that show C changes. They are being distributed through the NRCS Iowa, Indiana, and Nebraska State Offices.

For additional information, contact:

John Brenner
Air Quality Cooperating Scientist
Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory
(970) 491-5799
jbrenner@nrel.colostate.edu