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Introduction
Publications
Publications (65)
The world's soils store vast amounts (≈2,500 GT) of Carbon which acts as a vital sink to counterbalance the effects of increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide. There have been fruitful efforts to quantify soil Carbon stocks at national scales, which are required for policy level decisions but lack the high resolution required to support farm specific...
Peatlands have been artificially drained and degraded over 100s of years and have released huge amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) as a result. In organic grassland soils, raising the water table to prevent such emissions is being proposed to meet national greenhouse gas emission targets for the land use sector. At present, all of these soils (335,000...
Peat soils are high in soil organic matter (SOM) and are recognised stores of carbon. Knowledge of the spatial distribution of peat soils is becoming the focus of many studies and is related closely to peatland mapping. Accurate maps of peat soils have many applications of international importance e.g., gaseous emission inventory reporting or soil...
Introduction
On intensive grassland dairy farms in high rainfall areas with poorly drained soils, networks of open drainage channels linked to in-field drainage systems are needed to enable farm operations. Nitrogen and phosphorus point and diffuse sources may be connected to this open drainage channel network along surface and subsurface pathways,...
Farm roadway runoff is a high-risk source of pollution when connectivity with waters occurs. Nutrients in this runoff are dominated by fresh animal deposits, but recent dairy and beef farm studies showed that available phosphorus (P) accumulates in roadway surface material and can be lost in runoff. A current knowledge gap is to examine available P...
The mobilisation and impact of roadway runoff on dairy farms has been established as a sub-component of the nutrient transfer continuum. It is acknowledged that fresh nutrient sources deposited on roadways dominate runoff and recent work has shown that available phosphorus (P) in roadway substrates is also an important source component. The objecti...
The mobilisation and impact of roadway runoff on dairy farms has been established as a sub-component of the nutrient transfer continuum. It is acknowledged that fresh nutrient sources deposited on roadways dominate runoff and recent work has shown that available phosphorus (P) in roadway substrates is also an important source component. The objecti...
Highlights
Permeable materials can be used to fill mole drains and provide support to the cavity walls in structurally unstable soils.
Permeable materials extend the lifespan and improve the hydraulic performance of mole drainage systems.
Darcy’s law for nonlinear porous flow explained the hydraulic performance of the permeable materials used in th...
This project reviewed mitigation measures to treat farm roadway runoff, developed an
on-farm visual tool to find and document connectivity between roadway runoff and waters, and provided an evidence base to define roadway runoff as a unique sub-component of the nutrient transfer continuum.
Soil compaction is a regarded as a major environmental and economical hazard, degrading soils across the world. Changes in soil properties due to compaction are known to lead to decrease in biomass and increase in greenhouse gas emissions, nutrient leaching and soil erosion. Quantifying adverse impacts of soil compaction and developing strategies f...
In Atlantic Europe, on poorly drained grasslands soils, compaction negatively affects soil health when trafficked in wet conditions, while optimum grass growth cannot be achieved in excessively dry conditions. In Ireland, daily soil moisture deficit (SMD) information is forecasted at regional scale for all soil drainage classes. Optimal paddock con...
Introduction: On dairy farms with poorly drained soils and high rainfall, open ditches receive nutrients from different sources along different pathways which are delivered to surface water. Recently, open ditches were ranked in terms of their hydrologic connectivity risk for phosphorus (P) along the open ditch network. However, the connectivity ri...
Introduction: The mapping of soil properties, such as soil texture, at the field scale is important Q6 in the context of national agricultural planning/policy and precision agriculture. Electromagnetic Induction (EMI) surveys are commonly used to measure soil apparent electrical conductivity and can provide valuable insights into such subsurface pr...
The mapping of soil properties, such as soil texture, at the field scale is important in the context of national agricultural planning/policy and precision agriculture. Electromagnetic Induction (EMI) surveys are commonly used to measure soil apparent electrical conductivity and can provide valuable insights into such subsurface properties. Multi-r...
Soil moisture is important for understanding climate, water resources, water storage, and land use management. This study used Sentinel-2 (S-2) satellite optical data to retrieve surface soil moisture at a 10 m scale on grassland sites with low hydraulic conductivity soil in a climate dominated by heavy rainfall. Soil moisture was estimated after m...
In pasture-based grazing systems, farm roadways are a pivotal link to connect paddocks on the grazing platform to the milking parlour. However, their effectiveness in the efficient movement of the dairy herd between the grazing paddocks and the milking parlour has yet to be fully quantified. A validation experiment was conducted on a research farm...
The increased average Irish dairy herd size in a post-quota environment has put heightened pressure on grazing infrastructure. In a rotational grazing system, grazing infrastructure consists of the paddock system, which delineates the grazing areas into appropriately sized grazing parcels, and the roadway network, which connects these paddocks to t...
Intermittent sand filters (ISFs) are widely used in rural areas to treat domestic and dilute agricultural wastewater due to their simplicity, efficacy and relative low cost. However, filter clogging reduces their operational lifetime and sustainability. To reduce the potential of filter clogging, this study examined pre-treatment of dairy wastewate...
Internal farm roadways are connectors within agricultural landscapes, which act as sub-components of the nutrient transfer continuum (NTC). On dairy farms, roadway surface runoff dissolved and particulate phosphorus (P) sources stem from a combination of cow excreta deposited at locations that impede animal flow, soil deposited from cow hooves or m...
Real-time soil moisture measurements are essential to manage for adaptive dynamic management of climate change adaptation and reduction of nutrient losses and greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture and forestry. Soil moisture status influences crop growth, run-off, groundwater recharge, land surface-atmospheric exchange dynamics and greenhouse g...
On soils dominated by high proportions of clay and organic matter, soil acidity and poor nutrient use efficiency have a major impact on output potential. Due to the inherent chemical properties of these soils, reducing soil acidity and the prevalence of undesirable metallic cations poses challenges. As a result, these soils have a large capacity fo...
Farm roadways are an important sub-component of the nutrient transfer continuum (NTC) and roadway runoff (RR), leading to nutrient pressures in receiving waters at different times of the year at catchment scale. This study developed a semi-quantitative risk assessment model for dairy farms that once populated with data identifies roadway sections w...
Constructed wetlands (CWs) are a cost-effective and sustainable treatment technology that may be used on farms to treat dairy wastewater (DWW). However, CWs require a large area for optimal treatment and have poor long-term phosphorus removal. To overcome these limitations, this study uses a novel, pilot-scale coagulation-sedimentation process prio...
An intermittent sand filter (ISF) is a simple and cost-effective treatment method that may be adopted on farms to treat dairy wastewater (DWW). However, the use of ISFs has been limited due to the large area required for treatment, and the risk of filter clogging and phosphorus (P) breakthrough, which decrease the operational lifetime. To overcome...
The performance of land drainage systems installed in mineral soils in Ireland is highly variable, and is dependent on, amongst other factors, the quality and suitability of the aggregate used. In Ireland, aggregate for land drainage systems is usually river-run gravel and crushed stone. This study classified the distribution, type, popularity, siz...
A soils responses to phosphorus (P) input differs based on its chemical composition. Soil acidity and the presence of metallic cations dictate a soils chemical composition. Currently soil P application recommendations are universal and do not account for differing soil composition. A targeted soil specific approach is required to optimise P efficie...
This study evaluates a range of scenarios to reduce soluble reactive phosphorus (SRP) losses using the surface runoff phosphorus transport model (Surphos) to simulate the application of liquid manure (slurry) to grassland catchments. Surphos was applied using data from two contrasting sites in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. It explor...
Installation of shallow drainage systems (mole drainage, gravel mole drainage, and subsoiling connected to an underlying tile drainage system) is common in fine-textured grassland soils. The performance and efficiency of these systems are known to vary, and a greater understanding of these criteria is needed. This study analyzed shallow drainage sy...
Soil acidity and poor nutrient use efficiency are major limiting factors as regards output
potential on heavy soils, soils which are dominated by high proportions of clay and organic matter, with impeded drainage, high buffering capacity and located in high rainfall areas. Lime is applied in order to counteract these limiting factors and in turn im...
Runoff from farm roadways within farm boundaries are acknowledged as a year-round source of pollutants discharging to surface water, particularly during the main grazing season (Feb-Nov) when their usage is high. These losses are considered to be a significant catchment scale pressure and have led to recent legislation in Ireland to prohibit direct...
The artificial drainage of heavy textured gley soils is prevalent on pasture. Drainage of a soil profile reduces the water filled pore space (WFPS) in the upper soil horizons with consequences for N2 and N2O emissions, the fate of nitrogen (N), transformational processes and microbial and bacterial communities. The present intact soil column study...
Soil is a very thin and very heterogeneous layer of dirt that covers the vast majority of the terrestrial surface of the planet. Despite this it has an incredible array of functions, from growing of crops and grass and nutrient cycling to Flood regulation and carbon sequestration.
More and more soil is being included in the big picture plans comin...
Accurate maps of soil types at the field scale are required for many environmental and planning applications, from land use management and precision agriculture to drainage schemes and infrastructure development.
The thematic mapping of soil traditionally has been done using in-situ point sample measurements by a core or auger system (Zhang, 2017)...
From an environmental perspective optimised dairy systems, which follow current regulations, still have low nitrogen (N) use efficiency, high N surplus (kg N ha⁻¹) and enable ad-hoc delivery of direct and indirect reactive N losses to water and the atmosphere. The objective of the present study was to divide an intensive dairy farm into N attenuati...
From an environmental perspective optimised dairy systems, which follow current regulations , still have low nitrogen (N) use efficiency, high N surplus (kg N ha-1) and enable ad-hoc delivery of direct and indirect reactive N losses to water and the atmosphere. The objective of the present study was to divide an intensive dairy farm into N attenuat...
The acquisition of sub-surface data for agricultural purposes is traditionally achieved by in situ point sampling in the top 2m over limited target areas (farm scale ~ km2) and time periods. This approach is inadequate for integrated regional (water catchment ~ 100 km2) scale management strategies which require an understanding of processes varying...
The acquisition of sub-surface data for agricultural purposes is traditionally achieved by in situ point sampling in the top 2m over limited target areas (farm scale ~ km2) and time periods. This approach is inadequate for integrated regional (water catchment ~ 100 km2) scale management strategies which require an understanding of processes varying...
The physical and financial performance data used for analysis were obtained over a 6‐year period (2010–2015), from two different databases including a nationally representative data set of dairy farmers and a detailed data set of seven individual farms. Initial analysis indicated significant variations across soil type and region, across a wide ran...
Shallow drainage (e.g. mole and gravel mole drainage installed at 0.55 m below soil surface) is used on pasture-based farms to reduce soil moisture, deepen water table depth and thus increase grass utilization on soils with impeded drainage. There is, however, a lack of research on the effect that these drainage techniques have on soil greenhouse g...
Mole (M) and gravel-mole (GM) drainage systems improve the permeability of soils with high clay contents. They collect and carry away infiltrating water during episodic rainfall events. Characterisation of nutrient fluxes (concentration and flows) in overland flow (OF) and in mole drain flow (MF) across sequential rainfall events is important for e...
This chapter explores the predominant land-based production systems in Ireland, specifically describing grassland, arable and forestry production. Grass is the most important agricultural crop in Ireland representing the main feed source for the livestock sector. Arable production represents a relatively small area, largely due to excess soil moist...
Mole drain performance is known to vary temporally and spatially due to variations in soil properties, installation conditions, mole channel integrity, and weather patterns. In fine-textured, low-permeability soil profiles, moles can be installed to supplement an underlying tile drain system. However, moles are often not included in such designs. T...
In North Atlantic Europe intensive dairy farms have a low nitrogen (N) use efficiency, with high N surpluses often negatively affecting water quality. Low feed input systems on heavy textured soils often need artificial drainage to utilise low cost grassland and remain profitable. Heavy textured soils have high but variable N attenuation potential,...
The installation of artificial drains alters soil permeability such that migrating water interacts with soil and sediment biogeochemistry to mobilise or attenuate phosphorus (P). Soil and ditch sediment P chemistry was explored at two artificially drained sites with similar land use, management and drainage class. Site A was characterised by high t...
The implementation of site-specific land drainage system designs is usually disregarded by landowners in favour of locally established ‘standard practice’ land drainage designs. This is due to a number of factors such as a limited understanding of soil–water interactions, lack of facilities for the measurement of soil’s physical or hydrological par...
A drainage booklet describing the land drainage of several heavy farms in Ireland
Nitrous oxide (N2O) is a potent greenhouse gas produced by microorganisms in the soil. Land drainage alters soil moisture, which influences N2O emissions. The objective was to investigate the effect of mole drainage on N2O emissions. This study was conducted at Solohead Research Farm (52° 51’ N, 08° 21’ W, 95 m), with permanent perennial ryegrass/w...
There is uncertainty regarding the suitability of some soils for mole drainage. Soils with questionable potential
for the formation of stable mole channels generally have <45% clay and >20% sand, and gravel mole drainage is
an alternative. However, this technique is unattractive due to its relative cost (2014 price: €1500–2800 ha−1
versus €125–300...
Nitrous oxide (N2O) is a potent greenhouse gas with N2O flux from soils is primarily produced by microorganisms present in the soil, through multiple processes which are affected by factors such as soil contents of nitrate, moisture, carbon, oxygen and soil temperature. The aim of the current study was to investigate the effect of mole drainage on...
Dairy soiled water (DSW) is water from concreted areas, hard stand areas and holding areas for livestock that has become contaminated by livestock faeces or urine, chemical fertilisers and parlour washings. Losses of DSW occur as point (e.g. storage, pivot irrigators) and diffuse losses (e.g. during or shortly after land application). The concept o...
There is little empirical evidence to indicate that dairy cow live weight affects the extent of soil damage at the
hoof-soil interface during grazing on poorly drained permanent grassland. In the present study the impact of
Holstein-Friesian (HF) dairy cows with a mean (±standard deviation) live weight of 570 (±61) kg were compared
with Jersey × Ho...
A farmers practical guide to land drainage on grassland in Ireland.
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