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Assessing Impacts of Tile Drainage BMPs on Ecosystem Services
Citation:
Mitchell, M., T. Newcomer-Johnson, J. Christensen, B. Dyson, Tim Canfield, AND Ken Forshay. Assessing Impacts of Tile Drainage BMPs on Ecosystem Services. Meeting with EPA Region 7 Representatives, NA, IA, August 23, 2022.
Impact/Purpose:
We will present past work evaluating the ecosystem services provided by constructed wetlands designed to reduce nitrate export from agricultural systems and will discuss plans for future work evaluating other appropriate best management practices through a synthesis of published literature and stakeholder engagement. Potential best management systems that will be evaluated with an ecosystem services perspective include constructed wetlands, saturated buffers, denitrifying bioreactors, controlled drainage, and drainage water recycling.
Description:
Nature-based solutions and best management practices that support the reduction of nitrate pollution from agricultural tile drains to downstream receiving waters can provide economic and habitat benefits as well as a number of other ecosystem goods and services. These systems include constructed wetlands, saturated buffers, and a number of management practices designed to enhance nutrient retention; but the lack of comprehensive supporting information about the diverse benefits and costs are an ongoing obstacle to implementation of these solutions. By engaging with stakeholders and collaborating with the stakeholder groups involved in tile drain management, we can work to better identify and elucidate the obstacles and knowledge gaps to implementation for a broader suite of best management practices. This work will produce a prioritized list of science and research needs, identified by the collaborative team, and will focus research efforts on prioritized questions to engage fully in solution driven research. This will be beneficial both to support agency, state, and local partners as well as provide insight to form collaborative research efforts with our stakeholders that support sustainable value-added systems.