Site Index Looks At Potential Phosphorous ‘Hot Spots’
ANDY ANDREWS
Lancaster Farming Staff
(Dauphin
Co.) To put the brakes on po
tential phosphorous runoff from
farmland, efforts may have to
focus on the “hot spots” par-
At the recent no-till conference in Grantville were,
from left, Mark Goodson, agronomy agent, York County,
and speaker Dr. Andrew Sharpley, research soil scien
tist with USDA-ARS.
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ticular areas on a farm already
testing high with phosphorous
and prone to pose a threat to
watersheds.
That’s the message delivered
by a research leader with USDA
Agriculture Research Service
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(ARS) last week at the Mid-
Atlantic No-Till Conference at
the Holiday Inn in Grantville.
Dr. Andrew N. Sharpley, re
search leader with USDA-ARS
Pasture Systems and Watershed
Management Research Lab, as
sociated with Penn State, spoke
to about 111 growers, crop ad
visers, and other agri-industry
representatives at the tillage
conference.
Sharpley provided an over
view on work with the phospho
rous index, a site assessment
tool, in work done on several
farms in a nearby watershed.
In field maps, site index iden
tification can map potential
“hot spots” for phosphorous
runoff. The index can tell soil
scientists where phosphorous
levels are high, where potential
runoff can occur, but it doesn’t
answer the ultimate question:
does phosphorous get into the
streams?
The site covers four farms in
Northumberland County, en
compassing about 40 hectares,
Sharpley noted.
The FD-36 watershed has
swine, poultry, and other types
of farms nearby. All research
was done on lease agreements,
Sharpley said. About 30 percent
of the land was in forest and
there was some grazing.
Most of the farmland was in
East Earl, PA
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row crops, with com/soybean ro
tations, and some alfalfa, he
noted. The grid sampling began
about three years ago, including
phosphorous.
Agronomists are aware that
com has virtually no response
above SO parts per million
(PPM) of phosphorous. Above
100 ppm, there is no defining
crop response.
Of the areas mapped, about
60-70 percent of the cropped
area were above sufficient in
terms of phosphorous, mostly
from applications of swine
slurry and poultry manure.
There were streams and
creeks on the farmland next to
fields with high levels of phos
phorous.
What the research concluded
was that there are “some areas
more at risk than others,”
Sharpley said.
The national site index work
began with the Natural Re
source Conservation Service
(NRCS) in 1990, at the South
west Technical Institute in Fort
Worth, Texas. For years the
group studied phosphorous loss
in soils, and concluded that a
combination of factors in-
cluding modes of transportation
of the soil resource and the
source of the material con
tributed to potential runoff haz
ards.
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Lancaster Farming, Saturday, March 4, 2000-A43
Proximity of the hot spots to
streams could be the real culprit.
Managing those hot spots could
provide more efficient at con
trolling general runoff levels
rather than using a standard,
whole-farm approach.
“Where we are on the land
scape is critical,’’ he said.
“Phosphorous has to travel a
long way to get to a stream or
channel.” •
Soil texture and permeability
are keys. Wet areas in the winter
on soil, or applying the material
to snow or ice, can contribute to
runoff problems. Much of the
runoff in the Northeast, he
noted, could be blamed on satu
rated excess of phosphorous in
wet areas of land. Though heavy
downpours can contribute to
runoff, this region experiences
that situation rarely if at all.
In the future, USDA-ARS
may come up with a way to,
using GIS and mapping soft
ware, distinctly identify areas of
farms where runoff ability is
high or low, he noted.
Sharpley noted that 90 per
cent of the phosphorous from a
watershed is generated from 20-
25 percent of the land espe
cially the “hot spots.”
Right now, producers can
stem the runoff by improving
manure incorporation. If the fer-
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