| | AESA’s Resource Monitoring Program, initiated in 1997, tracks water and soil quality in Alberta’s agricultural areas. Both components provide the agricultural industry, researchers, extension agents and others with invaluable information on our soil and water resources. The collected data can help producers and producer groups to assess the effects of changing agricultural practices on the environment, and help extension agencies to evaluate the effectiveness of efforts to bring
about practice change.
Soil quality
The AESA Soil Quality Monitoring Program’s 42 monitoring sites are located across Alberta. Each site is typical of the soils, landscape, climate and agricultural practices in the area. The monitoring team annually measures a wide range of soil characteristics, such as nutrients, bulk density and organic matter content, as well as crop yield and biomass. Program Coordinator Karen Cannon says, “We are the only province in Canada to have a soil quality benchmark program.” worldwide, it is one of the few long-term programs for monitoring soil quality. And it is one of the few that take measurements on a landscape basis; each site has monitoring locations at the upper, middle and lower slope positions.
The program’s detailed, long-term dataset makes it invaluable for modelling. Cannon explains, “We can’t possibly measure soil quality for all the different types of agricultural practices across the province. So we use models, like wind erosion, water erosion, or crop growth models, to predict soil quality changes. The monitoring sites provide the data needed for validation of modelling, so we can see what is really going on and compare that with what the models are telling us.”
The unique dataset is also attracting many research partners to work with the AESA group on a wide range of environmental
studies. Cannon adds, “Monitoring about 20% of the work we do. We’re involved in many soil quality projects related to science development, risk assessment and extension.”
One of the program’s extension efforts could help farmers to monitor their own soil quality. She says, “We are currently evaluating various qualitative and quantitative options for farmers so they can identify potential problems and monitor the effects of their management changes.”
Water quality
AESA Stream Survey is the only program in Canada for long-term monitoring of water quality in small streams in agricultural areas. The program monitors water quality in 23 streams in agricultural areas across Alberta. The streams are in watersheds that are representative of various types of natural and agricultural characteristics common to Alberta. Samples are collected at each monitoring site during both high and low flows every year, to ensure representative data. The samples are tested for phosphorus and nitrogen, fecal bacteria, and about 40 pesticides.
Water quality tends to be very variable; data must be collected over a long period to determine trends. “However, unformation is emerging in terms of what water quality issues are specific to certain parts of the province, certain times of the year, things like that,” says Jamie Wuite, a Water Quality Specialist with Alberta Agriculture, Food and Rural Development who leads the program.
Such information is useful for targeting extension programs. Wuite explains, “For instance, with very few exceptions, your BMP [beneficial management practices] dollar is best spent on reducing the impacts of practices related to snowmelt or spring runoff because, in much of Alberta, most of the runoff happens before June. That has implications for things like selection of cow-calf wintering sites.”
AESA Stream Survey has developed an index to help communicate water quality results. Says Wuite, “The index distils the large amount of technical information that we prepareevery year into something more easily digested, and more useful to, producers, watershed groups and extension agents.” Wuite and his group have also developed a water quality monitoring manual for use by community watershed groups.
Both programs depend on strong partnerships with many agencies and individuals for their success. For more information on AESA’s Resource Monitoring Program, visit www.aesa.ca. |
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