To bring together a range of stakeholders to tackle nutrient loss develop and test agricultural BMPs, MWRD established a Nutrient Loss Reduction Research and Demonstration Project on Agricultural Land at its Fulton County site.
The site is approximately 13,000 acres of mostly strip-mined land; about 4,000 acres were reclaimed and for almost 40 years have been used for row crop production. Through MWRD funding, collaborations with universities and agricultural entities bring together soil scientists and technicians to develop BMPs. The site provides the opportunity to test agricultural BMPs on a field-scale or watershed scale with scenarios that might not be accessible on farmers’ fields.
During 2015 and 2016, MWRD established research to test the effectiveness of planting cover crops early, installed monitoring systems to collect baseline data on fields where BMPs will be implemented for watershed-scale evaluations, and began to set up other BMPs demonstrations. In 2016, MWRD joined with several University of Illinois departments, Illinois Central College (ICC), the Ecosystem Services Exchange, and Argonne National Laboratories to hold a workshop at the site. A cover crop field day took place in collaboration with ICC.
