Steve Miller’s research while affiliated with Michigan State University and other places

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Publications (12)


Trends and future of agricultural irrigation in Michigan and Indiana
  • Article
  • Full-text available

July 2023

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37 Reads

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2 Citations

Irrigation and Drainage

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Catherine Christenson

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Lyndon Kelley

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Steve Miller

Irrigation plays a critical role in Michigan and Indiana, USA, supporting various crops such as commercial corn, seed corn, soybeans, potatoes, fruit and vegetables. Irrigated lands in Michigan and Indiana have continuously increased over the last 20 years. As Michigan and Indiana have experienced more erratic precipitation and warmer temperatures, more irrigated lands will be projected. This study focused on understanding the changes in irrigation in Michigan and Indiana using USDA NASS data. The observation of changes from 2002 to 2017 helped to identify the critical considerations for developing future irrigation research and extension programmes in Michigan and Indiana. The study found that continuation of the collaboration with stakeholders, including state regulators, government staff, commodity groups, the irrigation industry and farmers, will be important to disseminate the most up‐to‐date irrigation information effectively to farmers. As more new irrigated lands are expected, outreach programmes for the optimal design of irrigation systems for specific crop types should be developed. Moreover, an easy‐to‐use and affordable irrigation scheduling technology is needed to increase the adoption rate of scheduling tools, ultimately improving irrigation water and energy use efficiency and minimizing environmental impacts.

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Figure 2. Comparison of CS616 and EC5 with soil sampling method for sand.
Figure 3. Comparison of CS616 and EC5 with soil sampling method for loamy sand.
Figure 4. Comparison of CS616 and EC5 with soil sampling method for sandy clay loam.
Figure 8. Comparison of factory-based calibration to corrected values for EC5 in sand.
Figure 9. Comparison of factory-based calibration to corrected values for EC5 in loamy sand.

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Performance Evaluation of Soil Moisture Sensors in Coarse- and Fine-Textured Michigan Agricultural Soils

December 2020

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535 Reads

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22 Citations

Agriculture

Soil moisture content is a critical parameter in understanding the water movement in soil. A soil moisture sensor is a tool that has been widely used for many years to measure soil moisture levels for their ability to provide nondestructive continuous data from multiple depths. The calibration of the sensor is important in the accuracy of the measurement. The factory-based calibration of the soil moisture sensors is generally developed under limited laboratory conditions, which are not always appropriate for field conditions. Thus, calibration and field validation of the soil moisture sensors for specific soils are needed. The laboratory experiment was conducted to evaluate the performance of factory-based calibrated soil moisture sensors. The performance of the soil moisture sensors was evaluated using Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE), Index of Agreement (IA), and Mean Bias Error (MBE). The result shows that the performance of the factory-based calibrated CS616 and EC5 did not meet all the statistical criteria except the CS616 sensor for sand. The correction equations are developed using the laboratory experiment. The validation of correction equations was evaluated in agricultural farmlands. Overall, the correction equations for CS616 and EC5 improved the accuracy in field conditions.




Fig. 2. (Color) Regions of substantial potential biomass derived net energy
Municipal Solid Waste Generated and Recycled in 2013 (Data from EPA 2016d)
Resources from Wastes: Benefits and Complexity

November 2017

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83 Reads

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13 Citations

Journal of Environmental Engineering

The United States produces significant quantities of waste biomass from wastewater treatment, food production, food services, and landscape and wood debris. This waste contains essential resources, including water, carbon, and nutrients. Conversion of carbon to energy and recovery of nutrients and water have the potential to reduce the use of scarce resources, protect the environment, and save funds. Several established, demonstrated technologies that convert wastes to resources are available and are reviewed in this paper. Included are anaerobic digestion, direct combustion, biodiesel production, ethanol production, and particulate phosphorus and organic nitrogen separation using ultrafiltration, ammonia stripping, and reverse osmosis. Thermochemical technologies include pyrolysis, torrefaction, and gasification. Unlike solar, wind, hydrological (dams and pumped storage), and closed-loop geothermal renewable energy technologies, the transportation of biomass can be energy intensive. Therefore, a holistic evaluation of complexity, costs, and benefits of converting wastes to resources is mandatory to ensure a net-positive energy value and environmental protection. Several tools described in this paper are available to aid stakeholders when considering biomass waste-To-resource projects. Many of these tools have long been in practice and have been extensively covered in technical and popular literature. As interest in renewable energy resources increases, new tools are being developed to address the challenges posed by biomass projects. This paper discusses tools that combine waste biomass inventories with a geographic information system mapping platform and cost-benefit analysis that return environmental, economic, and financial assessments of selected feedstocks that can be used in planning, siting, and financing a biomass-To-energy project.



Screening Co-Digestion of Food Waste Water with Manure for Biogas Production

January 2009

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138 Reads

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22 Citations

Anaerobic digestion, an environmental protection technology for treating organic compounds in waste water, produces biogas, resulting in a renewable energy source. A protocol including waste analysis, waste blending, energy potential and energy balance calculations was developed to determine the energy production from blending food and animal wastes. Fruit and vegetable waste water produced from crop commodity processing was characterized in terms of quantity and 5-day biochemical oxygen demand (BOD). Often these wastes have high levels of degradable carbon but lack buffering capacity and adequate nitrogen and other nutrients to meet the minimal C/N ratio needed for optimal digestion. Blending food-processing waste water with high nutrient manure can enhance the biogas production by optimizing nutrient levels and providing buffering capacity. The protocol shows the procedure to determine the optimal blend and theoretical biogas production from the anaerobic digestion of that blend. An energy balance technique that determines the lowest COD concentration required to close the energy balance in the digester during different seasons is illustrated. A case study was conducted to determine the potential energy production from anaerobically digesting blended waste water from the top 14 fruit and vegetable commodities in Michigan. The resulting biogas production supports a substantial amount of the energy consumption needed for the treatment process. This case study in Michigan can be extended to national level since the calculations were based on the mean value of their typical range. © 2008 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd


Waste Biomass Inventory to Support Renewable Energy Development

January 2009

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3 Reads

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1 Citation

Anaerobic digestion, gasification, direct combustion, ethanol production, biodiesel production, and other such technologies convert waste biomass to a renewable energy source as well as protect human health and the environment. High capital costs require optimized biomassbased fuels that are often developed by blending wastes. Transportation distances to move the biomass, however, must be minimized or a negative energy balance may result. Many states have compiled an inventory to assist in locating sources of biomass waste and non-productive crop land, including California, Ohio, Wyoming, Washington, and New Jersey. Several of these tools include a calculator to estimate energy availability from waste biomass. Michigan is developing a unique tool that also flags factors that may impact a site's suitability for a centralized facility.


Educational Collaborative on Sustainable Environmental and Agricultural Management (ECOSEAM)

January 2009

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27 Reads

The Educational Collaborative on Sustainable Environmental and Agricultural Management (ECOSEAM) objective is to educate senior undergraduate and MS degree students on specific, high priority agricultural and rural environmental issues using a comprehensive systematic approach. Funded by a USDA Challenge Grant, ECOSEAM established a multi-university, multi-disciplinary team to develop four high-priority courses in sustainable agricultural and rural environmental management. Courses developed and offered beginning January 2009 are:


Citations (9)


... By creating systems that are more cost-effective, saleable, and connect more seamlessly, a natural trend of increasing profits will follow, barring no other unforeseen circumstances. As the cost of the IoT system decreases, the IoT technology has been utilized in many applications in agriculture, including plant disease prediction, frost protection, and irrigation scheduling [25,26]. This led to an increase in crop yields and quality [12,27,28]. ...

Reference:

Design of an Internet of Things (IoT)-Based Photosynthetically Active Radiation (PAR) Monitoring System
Implementation of a Sensor Monitoring System to Improve Irrigation Management through On-Farm Demonstration
  • Citing Conference Paper
  • January 2023

... The accuracy of soil water content data plays a key role in acting and right decision making for plant growth, soil health, automatization of irrigation practices by putting water where and when it is needed, and higher crop productivity [1][2][3][4][5]. Accurate volumetric soil water content (VWC) determination helps in the efficient management of irrigation water in order to maximize crop production, to avoid groundwater depletion but also regarding low consumption because the agriculture sector accounts for 80% of consumptive water use, which makes this use a critical issue for the sustainability of natural resources [6]. ...

Performance Evaluation of Soil Moisture Sensors in Coarse- and Fine-Textured Michigan Agricultural Soils

Agriculture

... Because the soil moisture sensor measures only a small volume of soil surrounding the sensor, the installation should be conducted carefully. There must be good contact between the sensor and soil to avoid creating an air gap, which was also emphasized in many previous studies [22][23][24][25][26][27]. Other literature also discussed that factors, including soil temperature and salinity, could impact the sensor measurement [11,28]. ...

Improving Irrigation Water Use Efficiency: Using Soil Moisture Sensors

... These systems are effective for covering large open areas, but significant water loss due to evaporation and runoff can occur, especially during hot summer months . Additionally, this system requires a substantial initial investment and can be constrained by the shape and size of the fields (Dong et al., 2020;. In contrast, subsurface drip irrigation (SDI) offers a more efficient solution by delivering water directly to the root zone, minimizing evaporation, and maximizing water use efficiency. ...

Efficient Irrigation Management with Center Pivot Systems

... The same study found that at least 12 h of rest between dosing events maximized soil aeration. Metal mobilization was found not to be significant if the volumetric soil moisture content remains below 25-30% [19,20]. This highlights why BOD treatment in lagoons is especially important when looking at these systems. ...

Effectiveness of food processing wastewater irrigation
  • Citing Article
  • January 2017

Proceedings of the Water Environment Federation

... FW offers a promising resource for various applications due to its rich composition, including carbohydrates, proteins, and lipids [2]. Technologies including anaerobic digestion, direct combustion, biodiesel production, and ethanol production have also been developed for the conversion of waste materials into recoverable resources [7,8]. However, composting remains the most widely used method globally for recovering OM due to its simplicity [9]. ...

Resources from Wastes: Benefits and Complexity

Journal of Environmental Engineering

... Biomass resource inventories by type, location, availability, and cost help in developing the tools and processes to screen whether the resources are adequate to predict operational success of a proposed project and a positive return on investment (Schneemann et al. 2009). Consequently, many regions and states have waste biomass inventories such as in Washington (Frear et al. 2005 (Williams et al. 2015), and New Jersey (Rutgers 2015). ...

Waste Biomass Inventory to Support Renewable Energy Development
  • Citing Article
  • January 2009

... Food processing wastewaters are land applied throughout the United States at high rates that are regulated by states based on nutrient, hydraulic, or salt loading (Charmley et al., 2006). For example, in Michigan, wastewaters from food processing facilities are land applied at the rate of 2.5 to 15.4 mm/d (2700-16,000 gal/ac/d) or 1800 lb BOD/ac/d (Safferman et al., 2007;Mokma, 2006). Despite these regulations, groundwater contamination with metals or nitrate has been linked to land application of food processing wastewaters. ...

Wastewater Characteristics and Quantities Associated with Fruit and Vegetable Processing in Michigan
  • Citing Article

... Alcohols produced in SP and VFAP were converted into gasolineequivalents and assumed to be utilized in a compact, flexible-fuel vehicle that consumed 70 g of fuel per km traveled. The electricity produced in MP is considered to substitute an equal amount of the average national grid electricity produced in the U.S. Nitrogen-and phosphorous-rich solid residues from fermentation, which can subsequently be used as fertilizers, substitute an equal amount of nitrogen and phosphate fertilizers in the market [54,55]. The CML-IA baseline V3.03 characterization method, which is a problem-oriented approach that is incorporated in SimaPro V8.2.3, was selected to perform the impact assessments. ...

Screening Co-Digestion of Food Waste Water with Manure for Biogas Production
  • Citing Article
  • January 2009