1 / 13

agriculture

agriculture. Does agricultural drainage affect the Minnesota River?. “Agricultural drainage systems make crop production more successful.” - University of Minnesota Extension. Minnesota River Basin Soils.

kapila
Download Presentation

agriculture

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. agriculture Does agricultural drainage affect the Minnesota River? “Agricultural drainage systems make crop production more successful.” - University of Minnesota Extension

  2. Minnesota River Basin Soils Minnesota has more than 21,000 miles of ditches and channelized streams (shown in red), which serve as the drainage infrastructure for the agricultural regions of Minnesota. Gary R. Sands www.extension.umn..edu “Glacial processes in upper Midwest created an abundance of highly productive but poorly drained soils.” Gary R. Sands U of M

  3. What is Agricultural Drainage? Underground tile drainage Courtney Thoreson R. Cooke, University of Illinois

  4. How are Drainage Systems Implemented

  5. Why do we need drainage? • “Southern Minnesota would not reliably produce such high yields of crops if artificial drainage systems were not installed.” –Lowell Busman & Gary Sands

  6. Controlling Agricultural Runoff

  7. IS IT WORTH THE INVESTMENT?? Laying tile in Brown County, Minnesota “In recent years, farmers have installed as much as 100 million feet of subsurface drainage pipe in Minnesota annually.” – Busman & Sands

  8. How is Agricultural Drainage Affecting the River? More and more farmers are expanding their farmlands closer to the river which is altering the rivers path.

  9. Examples of Sub-surface drainage in the Minnesota River Basin

  10. Debate Activity Group 2: Environmentalists Group 1: Farmers Muddy Waters Debate Question: is advocating for higher crop yields worth the environmental risks to the worlds’ rivers? Controlling Farm Runoff Debate Question: is it worth protecting the rivers while giving up large, productive farming practices?

  11. “Ask-an-Expert about the Minnesota River” profiles scientists and citizens answering questions about the health of the Minnesota River. Produced by the Water Resources Center at Minnesota State University, Mankato To learn more, visit the Minnesota River Basin Data: mrbdc.mnsu.edu/learn

More Related