(upbeat music)
-: Very much during the last few years,
and it's becoming a problem
because it's limiting on nutrient availability,
and water availability for other plant species,
and for pastures and foreign growth.
So right now,
cedar constitutes about 22% of forest area in Nebraska.
So that's quite a bit of
percentage compared to other species.
And then another issue:
it's not really an issue
but animal production is very big in Nebraska,
as we all know.
Farms and ranches constitute about 92% of the states' land,
and what actually is the problem here
is that animals produce a lot of manure
that
is tricky to handle
because you get this large amount,
and what farmers usually do is they apply it on land,
that it's close to their farms,
but sometimes you get so much
that you need to find a way to get rid of it somehow.
And it's threatening to just leave it there
because it's contaminated water.
So, what we are trying to do here is
find ways in which these two products
that are considered waste can be used,
and we can actually give some value to them.
So, manure is very rich in nutrients
that are important for crops like nitrogen, phosphorous,
potassium and many other properties.
And cedar mulch actually
might increase
water retention.
It can improve soil physical properties in biological
dynamics in the soil.
So, overall our objective here is
to demonstrate the soil health, environmental
and economic benefits of applying manure and red cedar
for
crops.
So the way we set up these experiments,
we started during 2019
in two,
in four research sites, sorry.
Those were located in Ainsworth, Pierce, Brule
and Saint Paul.
And then during 2020, we did those treatments again
in those sites,
and we added two more sites in Julian and Overton.
So we set up our experiments to...
We separated plots
that were about 20 feet wide,
350 feet long.
And we randomly applied one of the treatments to each.
So the treatments were manure, manure and woodchips,
or woodchips only.
And then we also had control plots
where the farmer applied - whatever nutrients he applied -
in the rest of his field.
So, if he did a certain amount of fertilizers
in the rest of the field, that's what that plot would hold.
And we compared all of our treatment plots
to that control plot.
The first of the sites was located in Saint Paul
and we had silt loam soils there.
And you can see on the screen,
we applied this rate of manure in this site.
And the way we calculated
how much manure and woodchips we were applying is,
as you can see in the picture,
we had this tarp and we have the application tractor
go over it,
and then we weigh that tarp
with the amount of manure and woodchips that it had.
And that allows us to know...
Well, we can project that into how many tons per acre
of manure we were applying.
In Pierce, we used cattle slurry and woodchips,
and we had sandy loam soils.
Ainsworth had sandy loam soils
and we applied dry cattle manure and woodchips.
Then in Brule, we had fine sandy loam soils.
And what's different about this site is
that woodchips were not easily obtainable,
so we didn't wanna make an extra effort,
so we had coal ash from a sugar beets processing company
that's located in Scottsbluff
and sugar beet is also known to have
very good nutrients for the soil.
And it depends on how it was processed,
but it has certain amounts of carbon
that's very useful to the soils.
And it can also improve physical properties.
So we wanted to try this out in this site.
Then in Julian we had silt loam soils
and we applied swine slurry and woodchips.
And in Overton,
we had dry cattle manure and woodchips.
So the information we were interested in collecting
was basically we wanted to see soil physical properties,
and to do that we took samples for bulk density,
which is basically
the mass of soil that you can fit in a certain volume.
And that's very important to know
because when you have a too-high bulk density,
that can be limiting to the growth
of the roots of the plant.
So, it's basically
a measure of how compacted the soil can be.
Then sorptivity is the amount of time
that the water takes to be absorbed by the soils.
So we did a test for that, too, in all of the sites.
And in terms of the soil chemical properties,
we evaluated soil organic matter, pH, nitrogen, phosphorus
and potassium on a
zero to four inches depth.
And we collected from the farmers their crop yields
so we could compare among the plots.
And here's a little picture of our sampling process.
The first picture is how we collected the chemical analysis,
and the one on the bottom is the sorptivity test.
Some of our preliminary results and conclusions:
for Saint Paul in the top layer of the soil,
the chemical properties that actually increased
in our treatments were nitrates.
So both years, nitrates were higher in the plots
that had manure,
and in the second year manure plus woodchips.
And during the first year,
we had a higher amount of phosphorus
in plots with manure, woodchips and manure plus woodchips
compared to control plots.
And then in Pierce,
this is kind of interesting to see, I think,
the pH during the first year
was higher in the plots that had cattle slurry
and cattle slurry plus woodchips.
And then the second year,
those plots were significantly lower pH.
Then we also had an increase in solar organic matter
in the second year of the study
in plots where we applied our treatments.
In Ainsworth,
there was an increase in pH, solar organic matter,
nitrates and phosphorus during the first year.
But we didn't see any differences among plots
during the second year of the treatment.
A very similar situation in Brule,
where all those parameters were higher
in our treatment plots.
But the second year we observed no differences.
In Julian, there were no differences between plots,
treatment plots and control plots.
And the same thing happened in Overton.
Then in terms of physical properties,
bulk density was higher during the first year in Brule
in the plots that we had coal ash and coal ash plus manure.
So, probably those higher bulk densities are due to
application of coal ash.
And then the other side showed no differences
in bulk density.
Sorptivity in Ainsworth was higher during the first year
in the plots that had woodchips and woodchips and manure.
But the differences were not present
in the second year of the data.
And then during the second year,
Saint Paul had higher sorptivity,
and Overton had higher sorptivity in the treatment plots
compared to the control plots.
In yield, the first year that we collected data from sites,
there were no differences
between the treatment plots and control plots,
except for Brule
where the yield was lower
in the plots that had coal ash.
Then during the second year in what I've collected so far
shows that there's an increase of yield in plots
that had manure and then fall by woodchips,
then fall by control and then manure plus woodchips.
No differences in Pierce and in Brule.
We had higher yields in plots with manure,
but plots with just coal ash were still
a little lower than control plots.
So in general, we can say that manure and woodchips
have very good potential to supply nutrients
like nitrogen and phosphorus,
if they are applied to adequate rates.
And then solar organic matter had
an increase in two out of the six sites,
and that's a very good thing.
We could probably see that increase
if we keep doing,
if we keep applying woodchips.
Then crop yield was not negatively affected
by substituting inorganic fertilizers for organic sources.
And it was actually higher in two of the sites.
So with that, I'll be taking any questions if you have any.
Thank you very much.
(upbeat music)