Mapping of 30-meter resolution tile-drained croplands using a geospatial modeling approach

Abstract

Tile drainage is one of the dominant agricultural management practices in the United States and has greatly expanded since the late 1990s. It has proven effects on land surface water balance and quantity and quality of streamflow at the local scale. The effect of tile drainage on crop production, hydrology, and the environment on a regional scale is elusive due to lack of high-resolution, spatially-explicit tile drainage area information for the Contiguous United States (CONUS). We developed a 30-m resolution tile drainage map of the most-likely tile-drained area of the CONUS (AgTile-US) from county-level tile drainage census using a geospatial model that uses soil drainage information and topographic slope as inputs. Validation of AgTile-US with 16000 ground truth points indicated 86.03% accuracy at the CONUS-scale. Over the heavily tile-drained midwestern regions of the U.S., the accuracy ranges from 82.7% to 93.6%. These data can be used to study and model the hydrologic and water quality responses of tile drainage and to enhance streamflow forecasting in tile drainage dominant regions.

Tile drainage causes flashy streamflow response in Ohio watersheds

“…Watershed characteristics and boundaries were obtained from the GAGES‐II dataset (Falcone, 2011). For each of the 59 watersheds in Ohio, a 30‐m resolution tile drainage map (AgTile‐US) was aggregated to calculate the percent of each watershed under tile drainage (Valayamkunnath et al, 2020). This dataset was generated using soil drainage information, topographic slope, and county‐level tile drainage census data for the most‐likely tile‐drained area of the contiguous United States.…”

One size does not fit all: Toward regional conservation practice guidance to reduce phosphorus loss risk in the Lake Erie watershed

“…The majority of artificial drainage is in the form of subsurface tile drains, although there is also a need for surface drains to act as outlets for fields, particularly in the level topography of the southwest. There are differences in the density and depth of tile drainage across the Lake Erie watershed, with a greater proportion of cultivated fields in the southwestern part of the Lake Erie watershed (60–100% of harvest acres) underlain by tile drains than regions on the north‐central side of Lake Erie (40–60% of harvest acres) and northeastern areas of the watershed (0.1–40% of harvest acres) (OMAFRA, 2019; Sugg, 2007; Valayamkunnath et al., 2020). The clay and clay loam soils found in the southwest portion of the Lake Erie watershed are among the most intensively drained regions of the United States (Smith et al., 2008; Sugg, 2007).…”

Modeling the Hydrologic Influence of Subsurface Tile Drainage Using the National Water Model

“…We evaluate the NWM model performance with TD regarding the streamflow simulation with and without NWM parameter calibration, and explore the influence of TD on the regional water budget and regional hydrology. In these simulations, we use the recently developed 30‐m resolution Agriculture TD data for the US (AgTile‐US; Valayamkunnath, Barlage, et al., 2020) to explicitly define the tile‐drained croplands within the NWM.…”