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On-Farm Research ResultsManitowoc County Discovery Farms Project Area
Soaring Eagle Dairy (SED) is located five miles southeast of Newton or, approximately seven miles northwest of the village of Cleveland in Manitowoc County, Wisconsin. The farm is located in the Point Creek subwatershed and the Lake Michigan watershed. The selection criteria for this site included a strong emphasis on monitoring a relatively small watershed so that the water quality data could be compared to data gathered from individual field sites. This was done in order to determine the accuracy of using field data to estimate losses on a watershed scale. Potential monitoring sites were evaluated based on watershed size, percent of cropland managed by the cooperator, whether land represented the local area, affect on farming practices and access to the site. An ideal watershed site would have all the land that runs off into the monitoring equipment under the control of the cooperator and be larger than 20 acres. The installation of surface water monitoring equipment required extensive work and began in July 2004. Installation was completed in October, with the first runoff event in December of 2004. Data collection was conducted from December 2004 through October 2006. The impact of the high volumes of water, the inability to accurately identify the drainage area due to unmapped tile systems, and the inability to evaluate land management practices on fields not operated by SED, forced Discovery Farms to prematurely close the station. The program looked for other monitoring sites at SED. Unfortunately, no additional sites could be found to meet the criteria for monitoring without having other serious challenges. Below is a listing of the information available on this study. This study has been summarized in six fact sheets (four pages each), which have been further summarized into two page briefs. Scientists involved in on-farm studies evaluating nutrient and sediment losses who would like to further evaluate the data sets for scientific analysis can contact the UW Discovery Farms office to get a data request form. All data requests are evaluated to determine if our data was collected in an appropriate manner for the request, and approved by a sub committee of the Discovery/Pioneer Farm advisory committee.
Information Available
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Last updated: February 18, 2010