BACKGROUND
On-Field Ohio! was developed to provide agriculture decision makers with a quantitative method to assess the impact of crop management practices on erosion and phosphorus loss from agriculture fields. User’s field specific information entered into the program is not stored on the site's server and therefore can only be saved by the user.
The area of interest (field) selection uses a Google Maps interface that links to the USDA NRCS gridded Soil Survey Geographic Database to identify all the soil map units in the area of interest. Each map unit is utilized by the RomeSDK version 2.6.8.4 library of RUSLE2 along with user inputs to generate an estimate of soil erosion for each soil map unit. Surface runoff particulate bound phosphorus as well as additional phosphorus runoff risk due to fertilizer and/or manure application estimates are based on USDA-ARS Annual Phosphorus Loss Estimator (APLE) calculations calibrated to local conditions using field-scale edge-of-field runoff monitoring, farmer management and soil data. Surface dissolved P, tile dissolved and particulate P runoff losses are calculated from empirical equations derived from the edge-of-field runoff monitoring data.
Surface and tile runoff data were collected from edge-of-field monitoring data from 29 Ohio agricultural fields representing a broad range of soil type, field properties, climate zones, nutrient management practices, soil P levels and crop management practices. More than 14,000 runoff samples were collected from >2000 runoff events over three years. Additionally soil samples (>2000) and farmer management records were collected annually.