Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Nutrient Runoff And Leachate After Land-Application Of Digestate In A Laboratory Study Using Rainfall Simulations, Min Xiao

Open Access Theses

There has been an increasing number of anaerobic digesters on livestock farms in the United States during the past two decades. Anaerobic digestion of manure allows production of renewable energy and generation of stabilized and nutrient-rich digestate that can be used as organic fertilizer. However, the majority of the existed studies using liquid digestate as fertilizer only focused on the effectiveness for crop yield, nutrient content and microorganism in soil. There is insufficient understanding in the environmental impact of digestate land-application. This laboratory study used six treatments including four different liquid digestate treatments, a chemical fertilizer treatment, and an unfertilized …

Hydrologic And Water Quality Impacts From Perennial Crop Production On Marginal Lands, Qingyu Feng

Open Access Dissertations

Marginal lands are proposed as a viable option for producing biofeedstocks as these lands are not heavily engaged in agricultural production or may not be suitable for intensive row-crop food/feed production. However, meeting biofeedstock production goals will require large amount of marginal lands and the unintended consequences of producing biofeedstocks on marginal lands are not fully clear. The overall goal of this study was to evaluate the productivity of biofeedstocks on marginal lands and the potential impacts on hydrologic and water quality processes from the land use conversion.

This study was conducted in the Upper Mississippi River Basin (UMRB). First, …