Information

Level 2 Detail of experimental conditions (what might be found in a journal paper or project brief in Hydstra)

Description of study

What?

The objective of the project was to determine fertiliser application efficiencies from field nutrient balances under "conventional" and "best bet" management practices for sugarcane, bananas, dairy pasture and rainforest.

More specific objectives of the study included:

  • Determine fertiliser application efficiencies from field nutrients balance under conventional and best bet management practices;
  • Measure the quantities of nutrients and sediment being removed from agricultural fields and determine the mechanisms and pathways of their removal;
  • Using data from (i) and (ii) apply existing water sediment simulation models to determine significant rainfall, soil and agricultural management interactions leading to losses;
  • Determine land and crop management strategies which have a major effect on improving fertiliser application efficiency, thus minimising the export of nutrients and sediment; and
  • Extend the results and outcomes to industry and community groups.

This study investigated the quantity of nutrients and sediment moving off commercial agricultural fields and the determination of the mechanisms and pathways of their movement.

Where and When?

All sites where located on ferrsols in the Johnson River catchments and comprised of conventional and best bet management practices for sugarcane, bananas and dairy pastures with a control (rainforest site) instrumented for baseline nutrient data collection.

The project commenced in 1992 to 1995. The seasons were divided into 1992/93, 1993/94 and 1994/95.

How?

Nitrogen was measured in fertiliser, runoff, leaching losses and crop removal. The mineralisation or immobilisation of nitrogen was measured via the change in soil mineral nitrogen status and the change in the easily mineralisable nitrogen between planting and the following harvest of each crop.

The sum of the phosphorus input and outputs was assumed to be an addition to or depletion from the soil phosphorus pool.

The sites were installed with flumes, automatic runoff samplers, lysimeters and an automatic wealth station to enable measurement of all the hydrologic components. Soil and plant sampling allowed a balance to be developed at each site for nitrogen and phosphorus.

Project administration

Site identifier code: N/A

Principal investigator: Prove B

Principal data manager: N/A

Principal organizations: Queensland Department of Natural Resources and Sugar Research and Development Corporation

Data custodian: Queensland Department of Natural Resources

Key co-operators: National Landcare Program, Incitec Pty Ltd, Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority and Wet Tropics Management Authority

Data access policy: Research has been published but base data is not archived

Planned pathway for data: completed study, no evidence of formal database records.

Data warehousing: for ongoing studies N/A

Planned data upload frequency: for ongoing studies N/A

Key references and sources of this data synthesis

These data summaries have been extracted from:

  1. Nutrient balances and transport from agricultural rainforest lands: a case study in the Johnstone River Catchment.

Keywords:

Banana, sugarcane, rainforest, irrigation, runoff and nutrients

 

 

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