Estimating the impact of manure nitrogen losses on total nitrogen application on agricultural land in Canada

Abstract

Yang, J. Y., Huffman, E. C., Drury, C. F., Yang, X. M. and De Jong, R. 2011. Estimating the impact of manure nitrogen losses on total nitrogen application on agricultural land in Canada. Can. J. Soil Sci. 91: 107–122. About 1 million tonnes (1 Tg=1012 g) of livestock manure N are applied to farmland in Canada each year. Comprehensive information on manure N production and losses from manure during on-farm storage, handling and field application is scarce, especially at a regional scale. However, manure N losses during storage and land application are of considerable concern with respect to nitrogen use efficiency and environmental pollution of air, soil and water. In this paper, manure N production, manure N losses during storage and land application and manure N mineralization from organic manure and the resultant manure N available for annual crops were estimated using the Census of Agriculture database, Farm Environmental Management Survey data and manure N loss factors obtained from the literature. A database of fertilizer N application rates for field crops was developed at the regional scale based on recommendations provided in agronomic extension bulletins and fertilizer N sales. Fertilizer N and available manure N (i.e., total manure N produced minus N losses plus N mineralized from manure applied in previous years) were allocated to each of 24 crops at the regional scale from 1981 to 2006. The amount of manure N produced in Canada increased by 18.7% from 0.928 Tg in 1981 to 1.102 Tg in 2006. We estimated that 35.6% of the manure N produced was immediately available to crops, 25.6% was lost during storage and land application and 38.8% was carried over to the next year as organic N. The amount of fertilizer N applied to crops increased dramatically from 0.928 Tg in 1981 to a peak level of 1.68 Tg in 2000. There were significant changes in manure N production and application to farmland both on a regional and a temporal basis.

Projecting spring wheat yield changes on the Canadian Prairies: effects of resolutions of a regional climate model and statistical processing

“…Unless it is indicated for a varying planting date, all projected yield changes refer to simulation results with the fixed planting date. Recommended nitrogen fertilizer rates for soil great groups (Yang et al , ) were applied in the simulations. The model was run in the sequence mode, with continuous wheat during the entire time period for the baseline or the future runs.…”

Upscaling modelled crop yields to regional scale: A case study using DSSAT for spring wheat on the Canadian prairies

“…Generalized recommended N fertilizer rates for soil Great Groups (Huffman et al 2008;Yang et al 2011) (Table 2) were used in the simulations. For the simulations, we used N fertilizer rates recommended for wheat grown on stubble, which may result in some discrepancy between observed and simulated yields, especially in the Brown and Dark Brown soil zones, where up to 30% of wheat may have been planted into summerfallow, resulting in higher yields.…”

Effect of land management practices and environmental parameters on growing season denitrification rates under dairy crop rotations in Atlantic Canada

“…Therefore, the use of liquid dairy manure (LDM) as a nitrogen (N) source for the production of forage and silage crops is common. In a ranking by the proportion of farmland under the category of "very high manure N production" (≥40 kg N ha −1 ) between 1981 and 2006, Nova Scotia was found to have a proportion of farmland at 86% of not only Atlantic Canada but all Canadian provinces (Yang et al 2011). While the major cause of low NUE in Atlantic Canada is nitrate leaching (Mkhabela et al 2008;Fuller et al 2010), denitrification losses from agricultural land have also been identified as a significant N loss pathway that contributes to poor N utilization (Fan et al 1997), especially under conditions of high growing season precipitation such as those experienced in Atlantic Canada, which receives in excess of 500 mm between April and October in the major agricultural areas (Environment Canada 2014).…”