Project Team
Student(s)
Xavier Mack
Agricultural Sciences
Pennsylvania State University
Mentor(s)
Plant Sciences
Plant Sciences
Plant Sciences
Project Video
Project Abstract
In the past few decades, the population of Earth has risen dramatically. With the dramatic increase in population comes the dramatic increase in demand for food produced through agriculture. To produce food more effectively, inorganic nitrogen fertilizers and manures are used to supply nutrients to crops, especially grains and major cash crops such as corn and soybeans. While a significant portion of nitrogen from fertilizers and manures is used by plants for protein, some is lost to the environment through natural processes. One byproduct of agricultural production is nitrous oxide, a potent greenhouse gas that stay in the atmosphere for 114 years and with a global warming potential 300 times that of carbon dioxide (US EPA 2020). In this experiment, fertilization and tillage methods were compared using the Farm Energy Analysis Tool (FEAT) to estimate the greenhouse gas intensity and energy production efficiency of a corn-soy rotation between 2016 and 2018 at the Penn State University Agronomy Research Farm at Rock Springs, PA. Three corn fertilization methods (inorganic nitrogen, broadcast spread dairy manure, injected dairy manure without tillage) and conservation/chisel-disc were for four soil primary soil management combinations: manure injection/no-till, broadcast manure/no-till, inorganic nitrogen fertilizer/no-till, and broadcast manure/chisel-disc. The results will allow us to determine which soil and nutrient management methods will most effectively reduce greenhouse gas emissions of nitrous oxide emissions from the manure and nitrogen fertilizers applied to the soil and from carbon dioxide emissions energy used to produce the inputs and farm equipment crops.
Project Poster
https://sites.psu.edu/climatedrawdown2020/files/formidable/6/Mack_7-24-2020-Poster-1.pdf