Quick look
With help from a $1 million federal grant, Iowa State University is developing the Watershed Innovation Farm – a demonstration site for showcasing nature-based water-quality measures such as saturated buffers, bioreactors and wetlands.
AMES, Iowa – Iowa State University scientists have invented and refined several practices to improve the quality of water flowing through Iowa farms. A new Iowa State project will soon provide an in-person look at those conservation measures designed to reduce nutrients in agricultural runoff.
With help from a $1 million grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Iowa State will debut the Watershed Innovation Farm next year – a demonstration site for showcasing nature-based water-quality measures such as saturated buffers, bioreactors and wetlands, along with related advancements in sustainable woodland management and monitoring technology.
Publicly available examples of stackable, scalable solutions for reducing levels of nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus in waterways will give visitors a convenient and hands-on way to learn about proven methods for water-quality improvement, said project leader Jacqueline Comito, program director for Iowa Learning Farms, an ISU-based team focused on conservation education and outreach.
“They will be able to see what these practices look like and what it takes to make them happen,” Comito said. “It’s a really exciting collaboration that ties together a lot of innovative work being done here.”
Accessible and expandable
Edge-of-field practices highlighted by the Watershed Innovation Farm will be clustered near the ISU Dairy Farm about 2 miles south of Ames. Several projects southwest of the dairy farm are already in place, including two saturated buffers and six bioreactors that feed into Walnut Creek. Over the next year, wetlands and grassed waterways will be installed northeast of the dairy. A model of sustainable woodlands management will sit a little farther north, on about 75 acres of wooded university land near the Kent Feed Mill.
The exhibits will be accessible by maintained trails and feature educational signs designed by Iowa Learning Farms. All displays will be within about 3 miles of each other and a short drive from campus, a setup that lends itself to guided tours. Workshops or outreach events also could make use of meeting space in the nearby Alliant Energy Agriculture Innovation Lab, the ISU Research Park building that houses the Digital Ag Innovation Lab.
The project’s proximity to Iowa State facilities and land offers flexibility to expand. Project leaders are already planning to include a stop showing a field using cover crops, an in-field management method that improves water quality, Comito said. Another possibility is an exhibit showing prairie strips, a practice pioneered at Iowa State.
“We’re building something we expect to continue to grow in the future,” Comito said.
In addition to drawing attention to a wider range of effective options, broadening the project to include as many conservation measures as possible in action on Iowa State farms makes it clear that the university practices what it preaches, said Kendall Lamkey, associate dean for facilities and operations for the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.
“What we’re doing as an institution south of town will have benefits that will outlive all of us,” Lamkey said. “We could have built these things just to have them to do the job they are designed to do, but we’re in the education business. All the university’s land should be involved in our research, teaching and extension missions somehow.”
Building momentum
The Watershed Innovation Farm will aim to appeal to a variety of audiences, from farmers and industry leaders to teachers and conservation officials. Students are expected to be especially frequent visitors, including field trips for younger groups and hands-on learning and research opportunities for Iowa State students.
A physical home base for learning about integrated watershed management is important for building awareness and momentum, crucial for increasing farmer interest in adopting these strategies and developing the workforce needed to speed up progress, Comito said.
“When we get to the point when we’re really scaling up, we’re going to need more engineers. We’re going to need a lot of people who are trained and understand these technologies. And who will be educating them? Iowa State University,” she said.
The labor needs for wide implementation of edge-of-field practices are significant, said Michelle Soupir, professor of agricultural and biosystems engineering and a leading expert in bioreactors – field drainage filters that route tile lines through underground trenches of biological matter such as wood chips to help remove nitrates. There are about 300 bioreactors on Iowa farms, but it would take an estimated 100,000 bioreactors to achieve state goals to reduce nutrient runoff by 45%, she said.
The scale of change needed to make a big difference is part of the reason why it’s essential to pursue water-quality improvement in varied ways, a multi-pronged approach which the Watershed Innovation Farm will emphasize.
“A lot of times around the state, you’ll see a practice in one place and then have to go a few miles down the road to see another one,” Soupir said. “It’ll be great to have a combination of options in the same general location.”
Research connections
EPA funding didn’t pay for construction of the featured practices. The saturated buffers were built a few years ago with support from the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture. The bioreactors were installed earlier this summer with Ames, the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship and the Natural Resources Conservation Service sharing the cost with Iowa State. IDALS also funded monitoring equipment for a bioreactor and staff time to collect water samples. The wetlands will be constructed over the next year with university and IDALS funding.
A grant of about $200,000 from the Iowa Department of Natural Resources will cover signage, another bioreactor monitor and future events at the Watershed Innovation Farm. The three-year federal grant is for signage, staff and students to develop programming, and graduate students to assist with research planned at the exhibit sites.
One graduate student will be focused on the bioreactors, which will feature two systems with dual chambers and automated controls for remote operations and monitoring. Another will work on drone-based water quality monitoring, using the lab-on-a-drone technology being developed by mechanical engineering professor Jonathan Claussen.
A third graduate student will contribute to the woodlands portion of the project, led by Billy Beck, associate professor of natural resource ecology and management and statewide forestry specialist for ISU Extension and Outreach. They will study the impact of trees in one of the project’s two saturated buffers – a practice co-invented by Tom Isenhart, professor of natural resource ecology and management, that diverts farmland drainage below the surface of field-edge buffers, letting perennial plants and microbes remove some of the nitrate before it seeps into waterways.
Beck is also collaborating with Soupir to gauge the performance of differing types and sizes of wood chips in bioreactors, which could end up producing a new market for trees removed from Iowa woodlands. Most woodlands in Iowa are not actively managed by landowners, which often leads to invasive or unwanted species crowding out desirable trees such as oak, walnut and maple, he said.
The Watershed Innovation Farm’s woodlands management exhibit, which will be developed over the coming year, will demonstrate some common issues in Iowa’s wooded areas and methods for removing problematic invasive species, Beck said.
“For many Iowa producers who own woodlands, their management is completely hands-off. We want to familiarize them with some of the techniques we use so they can be more comfortable with stewarding their woodlands and confident that they’ll see positive results,” he said.
