Illinois Corn Growers Association and the University of Illinois are establishing a network of 3–5 field laboratories, which are long-term research sites established to assess conservation practices from agronomic, economic, and environmental perspectives. These sites are intended to serve as unique, state-of-the-art research platforms for multidisciplinary teams of university researchers to perform field-scale agronomic research while collecting high-resolution soil and water data, including water loss from tile drainage systems. The first field laboratory was established near Decatur in 2016.
