Browsing by Subject "water quality"

Now showing 1 - 20 of 51
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    2002 Water Quality Survey: Results and Technical Report.
    (Minnesota Center for Survey Research (MCSR), 2003) Minnesota Center for Survey Research
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    Advances in Equine Health and Management II: Grazing Winterhardy Perennial Ryegrass, Estimating Bodyweight, and Evaluating Novel Methodologies for Livestock Water Quality
    (2019-07) Catalano, Devan
    The horse industry provides $122 billion dollars of value added to the U.S. economy, with a $50 billion dollar direct impact to GDP (AHC, 2017a). The use of horses is incredibly diverse, ranging from rescues and recreation sectors to working horses and the competition and racing sectors. Horse owners and enthusiasts are a welcoming community with a strong desire to educate themselves and improve the health of their horses, increase production of their land, and minimize labor and feed costs. In the age of digital media, there are numerous online forums and popular press websites to share information. In addition to, and perhaps despite this, many owners look for scientific information to validate their management decisions. This feedback allows us to keep track of questions and issues that horse owners are having today. In turn, this leads us to new research to answer these questions. Three specific areas of interest are highlighted in this dissertation—alternate forages and ways to improve existing pastures, how to manage horse bodyweight and body condition, and ways to ease or reduce the labor involved in farm management. Perennial ryegrass (PRG) is a high quality and yielding forage that, until recently, lacked the winterhardiness to persist in the upper Midwest. The objective was to evaluate the yield, persistence, forage nutritive value, and livestock preference of a new winterhardy PRG cultivar (‘Forageur’) grown in monoculture and in mixture with white clover under horse and cattle grazing. Research was conducted in St. Paul (SP) and Grand Rapids, MN (GR). Meadow fescue (MF), tall fescue (TF), orchardgrass (OG), and three perennial ryegrass varieties (‘Forageur’, ‘Remington’, and ‘Spreader IV’) were seeded in 2015 (SP) and in 2016 (GR); and were grazed for 2 days by either 6 adult horses (SP) or by 6 cow-calf pairs (GR). Prior to grazing, forage yield and nutritive value samples were collected, and post-grazing, fields were visually assessed for the percentage of forage removal to determine livestock preference. Yields of PRG cultivars were similar but lower yielding (6.9 to 7.6 Mg ha-1) compared to other CSG. Persistence was similar among all CSG in SP; however it was lower for PRG in GR. ‘Forageur’ was highly preferred by both horses (≥74% removal) and cows (≥70% removal) and was consistently among the highest for crude protein (CP; 200 g kg-1), equine digestible energy (Equine DE; 2.35 Mcal/kg), and bovine metabolizable energy (Bovine ME; 2.6 Mcal/kg), moderate for nonstructural carbohydrates (NSC; 136 g kg-1), and among the lowest for neutral detergent fiber (NDF; 518 g kg-1). This research suggests that ‘Forageur’ is viable PRG cultivar to use in upper Midwest livestock pastures. Adding breed type, height, and neck circumference to body length and girth circumference improves bodyweight (BW) estimation in different breeds of horses; however, equations have not been developed for all breed types. The objectives were to develop BW estimation equations for Miniature, saddle-type, and Thoroughbred horses using morphometric measurements. Measurements were collected on adult (≥ 3 yr, non-pregnant) saddle-type (n=209), adult (n=249) and juvenile (< 3 yr, n=61) Miniatures, and adult Thoroughbreds (n=100). Personnel determined body condition score (BCS), measured withers height and girth circumference at the third thoracic vertebra, body length from the point of the shoulder to the point of the buttock and to a line perpendicular to the point of the buttock, and neck circumference at the midway point between the poll and withers. Each horse was weighed using a livestock scale. Bodyweight estimations equations were developed using linear regression modeling and log transformation. Mean (±SD) BCS was 6.1 (±0.8), 5.4 (±0.6), 6.0 (±1.0) and 5.0 (±0.6) for adult and juvenile Miniatures, saddle-type, and Thoroughbreds, respectively. Bodyweight estimation equations developed through the current research were within 4% of the scale BW, and offered improvements over previous BW estimation equations and weight tapes, which were inaccurate by 5 to 25%. Owner estimated BW was within 8 to 15% of scale BW. Morphometric measurements were successfully used to develop BW equations for Miniature, saddle-type and Thoroughbred horses. The equations will assist owners and professionals with managing horse BW and will be added to the Healthy Horse app. Goldfish (Carassius auratus) have been reported as a method to keep water tanks clean; however, little information exists on this approach. The objectives were to evaluate the efficacy of goldfish on maintaining water quality in tanks and to evaluate the frequency that this method is used. The first objective was completed June through October 2017 in St. Paul, MN using plastic and metal 379 L stock tanks, each with and without goldfish in a drylot that housed six adult horses. The stocking rate was 5 goldfish per tank, and all tanks were refilled when any tank reached 190 L. Daily readings of total dissolved solids (TDS) and water turbidity (NTU), and weekly samples to measure chlorophyll a were taken. At the end of each 28-day period, tanks were cleaned and rotated. Plastic tanks had lower TDS compared to metal tanks (P < 0.001); however, metal tanks had lower NTU and chlorophyll a (P ≤ 0.008). Adding goldfish resulted in lower TDS (P < 0.001); however, there was no effect on NTU or chlorophyll a (P ≥ 0.097). The second objective was completed using an online survey that was open from October 31 until December 15, 2018. Of the 672 completed surveys, 56% had not tried using goldfish in water tanks, 26% had utilized goldfish in the past, and 18% currently used goldfish. The inclusion of goldfish in water tanks did not affect all water quality parameters; however, 44% of survey respondents had tried, or were currently using, this management method.
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    Analysis of stormwater runoff from impervious surfaces in downtown Minneapolis, MN
    (2021-09) Faust, Brittany
    Urban stormwater runoff is a major concern for water quality. Impervious surfaces, especially in urban environments, can allow contaminated stormwater direct access to receiving waterbodies. Impervious surfaces make up nearly 90% of land cover in downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota. When rain falls or snow melts, pollutants quickly transfer from those surfaces into nearby waterways. A study of stormwater runoff from impervious surfaces in downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota USA was conducted to understand potential impacts of different types of impervious surfaces (i.e., streets, sidewalks, parking lots and rooftops). The results of this study could be used to inform urban stormwater management strategies, particularly when the makeup of the area is mostly impervious surfaces. Between summer 2017 and spring 2018, a rainfall simulator was used to deliver water upon street, sidewalk, and parking lot sites, which removed differences in rainfall characteristics, and tested the role of varying surface types and seasonal differences. Characteristics of rooftop runoff were studied using natural rainfall and snowmelt event data collected year-round with automated samplers and rain gauges. Results showed that the first flush of runoff contained higher pollutant concentrations compared to the whole rain event, and water quality differences for all of the surfaces were relatively minor for the summer and fall seasons. The greatest difference was observed with higher pollutant concentrations occurring in the spring for all sites, particularly on streets. Higher than expected concentrations of chloride in the winter occurred from roofs, though concentrations were overall much smaller than the ground sites in the spring. Street event mean concentrations (EMCs) were the highest across different stormwater constituents, including chloride, total phosphorus, and total suspended solids. For each stormwater constituent, when the average EMC value was used for calculating pollutant loading instead of individual surface type EMC values, street contributions were underestimated, and the other surface types were overestimated due to the higher pollutant concentrations from streets than other impervious surfaces.
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    Assessing forest land conversion risk to maintain water quality in North Central Minnesota
    (University of Minnesota Duluth, 2018-07) Host, George E; Kovalenko, Katya; Meysembourg, Paul
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    Carver County Water Management Organization Downtown Waconia Water Quality Education Campaign
    (Resilient Communities Project (RCP), University of Minnesota, 2016) Wellman, Clark; Ljungkull, Marta; Feng, Allie; Bookless-Geis, Teri
    This project was completed as part of the 2015-2016 Resilient Communities Project (rcp.umn.edu) partnership with Carver County. Lake Waconia is under threat of water quality impairment, primarily because of stormwater runoff from residential and business properties that surround the lake shore. Carver County Water Management Organization (WMO) and the City of Waconia wanted to investigate strategies to reduce pollution from runoff. The goal of this project was to design an educational program geared toward Waconia homeowners and business owners to encourage good water stewardship practices. Carver County WMO project lead Madeline Seveland partnered with students in OLPD 5204: Designing the Adult Education Program, to develop a comprehensive education program and campaign. The students' final report and presentation are available.
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    Characterization of streams and rivers in the Minnesota River Basin Critical Observatory: water chemistry and biological field collections, 2013-2016
    (2017-09-06) Dolph, Christine, L.; Hansen, Amy, T.; Kemmitt, Katie, L.; Janke, Ben; Rorer, Michelle; Winikoff, Sarah; Baker, Anna; Boardman, Evelyn; Finlay, Jacques, C.; dolph008@umn.edu; Dolph, Christine, L.
    This dataset was collected to inform the Water, Sustainability and Climate Minnesota River Basin Observatory, and was supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1209402 Water, Sustainability and Climate (WSC) – Category 2, Collaborative: Climate and human dynamics as amplifiers of natural change: a framework for vulnerability assessment and mitigation planning. The dataset contains point locations, watershed areas and water quality information for 231 ditch, stream, river and wetland sites located in the Le Sueur River, Chippewa River, Cottonwood River, Cannon River, Wantonwan River and Blue Earth River basins of Minnesota. Study sites ranged in size from 1st order ditches and streams to an 8th order river. Each of these sites was sampled at least once between 2013-2016 (most sites were sampled multiple times) for one or more of the following parameters: 1) water chemistry (total dissolved nitrogen, nitrate-N, nitrite-N, ammonium-N, particulate nitrogen, soluble reactive phosphorus, total dissolved phosphorus, particulate phosphorus, total phosphorus, dissolved organic carbon, dissolved inorganic carbon, particulate carbon, chlorophyll a, total suspended solids, volatile suspended solids, delta-H-2 and delta-O-18 stable isotopes of site water, specific UV absorbance (SUVA) of site water, fluorescence index (FI) of site water); 2) stable isotopes (delta-C-13, delta-N-15, delta-H-2) of invertebrate consumers, particulate carbon and potential food sources; 3) denitrification rates and characteristics of benthic sediment in agricultural drainage ditches; and 4) stream discharge. This dataset also includes spatial data files containing study site locations and watershed areas delineated for each site.
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    City of Minnetonka Watershed Analysis
    (Resilient Communities Project, University of Minnesota, 2012) Alapati, Gayatri; Baldwin, Patrick; Bogg, Karen; Dunsmoor, Josh; Kaczmarek, Hagen; Kalinosky, Paula; Liddle, Patrick; Mazack, Jane; Niebuhr, Spencer; Taraldsen, Matt; Winzenburg, Lucas; Wynia, Molly
    This project was completed as part of the 2012-2013 Resilient Communities Project (rcp.umn.edu) partnership with the City of Minnetonka. To identify strategies for improving water quality in Minnetonka lakes, the City needed more reliable information about the sources and amounts of potential biological and chloride contamination in the watersheds, as well as the avenues of transit for these contaminants from upland areas to the city's water bodies. Minnetonka project lead and water resources engineer Liz Stout worked with a team of students in 5295 to design a methodology for determining biomass loads within an identifiable tree canopy, and create a geodatabase of transit and flow properties within Minnetonka’s infrastructure. The students' final report and presentation are available.
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    Coastal Area Impervious Surface Assessment.
    (Duluth, MN: Center for Community and Regional Research, University of Minnesota at Duluth., 2005) Stark, Stacey L; Schomberg, Jesse
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    Continuous Living Cover in a Corn-Soybean Rotation: Management Approaches and Environmental Benefits
    (2018-07) Carlson, Rebekah
    Continuous living cover provides ecological, environmental and economic benefits to agricultural systems. Integrating continuous living cover into cropping systems in the Upper Midwest is a strategy to maintain ecosystem services in current corn and soybean rotations. Despite existing knowledge of the compatibility of continuous living cover in corn and soybean rotations, refinement of agronomics of these systems is needed. The purpose of this thesis is to clarify the effects of continuous living cover on corn and soybean systems in the Upper Midwest through refining management techniques for perennial cover crops, determining if seed shatter of winter annual oilseeds in a relay cropping system can provide the option for a re-seeding winter annual double crop; and quantifying impact of relay cropping on water quality through the estimation of N losses in a relay cropping system using crop models.
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    Effects of Agricultural Drainage on Aquatic Ecosystems: A Review
    (2009) Blann, Kristen, L.; Anderson, James, L.; Sands, Gary, R.; Vondracek, Bruce
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    The Effects of Water Quality on Nursery Pig Performance and Health
    (2020-12) Lozinski, Brigit
    Water is an essential nutrient necessary for survival. There are minimal literature and water quality suggestions available to aid in describing ideal drinking water for pigs. An initial survey was conducted to understand how Minnesota pig producers perceive the quality of water in their nursery barns. Initial survey responses were summarized and 15 barns with perceived “excellent” or “intolerable” water quality were chosen to be sampled and analyzed for 29 analytes. An experiment was then conducted to determine effects of drinking waters of differing qualities on growth performance and health of nursery pigs. Weanling pigs (n = 450) were randomly assigned to one of three treatments consisting of varying water quality. Pig growth performance, health, and behavior were measured and water quality was monitored throughout the study. Water quality did not change while stored throughout the experiment. There were no differences among treatments in ADG (0.46 kg; 0.46 kg; 0.47 kg) or ADFI (0.68 kg; 0.69 kg; 0.71 kg). Phagocytic activity of pigs fed different water sources also was not different for the percentages of monocytes (73.2 to 74.5%) and granulocytes (93.6 to 95.3%) (P = 0.91 and 0.45, respectively). These results suggest that the gut health and immune status of pigs consuming water sources of variable quality were similar and did not affect morbidity and mortality. Pigs did not have an aversion to the waters provided, as total time spent at the drinker did not differ among treatments on d 1 (P = 0.65), 2 (P = 0.82), or d 3 (P = 0.79).
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    Eureka Township Envisioning Task Force Report: Exploring the Possibilities.
    (2003) Mega, Matthew; Mitteco, Gina; Greco, Michael D. (Mike)
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    Eureka Township Envisioning Task Force Report: Summary Report
    (2003) Mega, Matthew; Mitteco, Gina; Greco, Michael
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    Gap-filled USGS sensor data for nitrate, discharge and temperature for selected sites in Iowa, U.S.A.
    (2018-03-22) Singh, Arvind; Hansen, Amy, T; Arvind.Singh@ucf.edu; Singh, Arvind
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    Increasing the Environmental Services of Working Agricultural Lands Through Best Management Practices
    (2015-09) O'Neill, Ann
    Conservation managers working to reduce agricultural nonpoint source (NPS) pollution through best management practice (BMP) implementation must work in light of competing objectives and multiple constraints. These include the limitations of current decision frameworks, budgets, and socially acceptable practices. All three studies in this dissertation sought to investigate one primary, over-arching question: What strategies should conservation decision makers consider to increase environmental services through BMP implementation on working agricultural lands? The first study addresses this question from a social science perspective, by using focus group methodology to describe and analyze the decision making process of conservation managers working to implement BMPs on agricultural lands in Minnesota. The study develops a descriptive decision framework of local conservation managers, which may be useful to enable evidence-based conservation efforts to overcome the knowledge-implementation gap. A second study addresses this question from physical science and economics perspectives, by comparing rankings of BMP physical effectiveness (% of total phosphorus removed) to BMP cost-effectiveness ($/lb. of total phosphorus removed). Empirical BMP effectiveness studies from five Midwestern states and cost data from Minnesota BMP installations were used. Study results demonstrate the importance of including cost data, along with pollution reduction data, in agricultural BMP decision processes. This research summarizes the wide range of cost-effectiveness values for BMP implementation, both within and between agricultural BMPs, and offers suggestions to use limited conservation resources more efficiently. The third study addresses this question from a techno-economic and policy perspective, by developing a model to estimate the economic feasibility and environmental implications of various scenarios of microwave assisted pyrolysis (MAP) units to process cellulosic biofuels from perennial feedstock BMPs in southern Minnesota. The study finds that the expected economies of scale gained by the mobility of small-scale pyrolysis units are not sufficient to overcome the increased labor costs, but that stationary small-scale distributed pyrolysis units show some economic promise, particularly if environmental benefits are considered. This research is of primary interest to state and perhaps federal-level policy makers working to design efficient and effective programs to implement BMPs to improve water quality and increase the provision of environmental services on working agricultural lands.