Nebraska Water Center Annual Report (2019-2020)
The Nebraska Water Center (NWC) Annual Report is out! Included is an interview from Centra Platte LLT member Jason Farnsworth. The NWC goals are:
- Coordinate a wide range of research impacting water issues
- Foster a deeper understanding of water and its many beneficial uses
- Help develop new water researchers
- Train future water researchers and engineers
- Extend water research results to water professionals and the public through publications, seminars and conferences, electronic media, lectures and tours
Penn State Extension Unveils Roadside Guide to Clean Water
Your neighbors and your community may already be taking big steps to help reduce water pollution. Farmers, townships and cities, businesses, and homeowners are using practices on their land to help protect our waterways. Many of these practices may look unfamiliar and go unnoticed. Recognizing what to look for is a first step to appreciating the good work being done for water all around you.
In this guide, you will discover some of the most popular practices being used in urban, suburban, and rural areas. By noticing and appreciating the progress being made, we can all be part of protecting our local water.
Using This Guide
This guide includes some of the most popular best management practices for water quality. Pictures of each practice from different perspectives and in different settings will help you narrow it down. But every site is unique and what you find in your community may look different from what you see here.
The Roadside Guide to Clean Water includes information on:
- Cover Crops
- Grassed Waterways
- Manure Storage and Application
- Native Meadows
- Porous and Permeable Paving Materials
- Proper Pet Waste Disposal
- Rain Gardens
- Riparian Buffers
- Sediment Barriers
- Stormwater Basins
- Streambank and Floodplain Restoration
- Urban and Suburban Trees
- Vegetated Swales
https://extension.psu.edu/roadside-guide-to-clean-water
Emerging organic contaminant levels greatly influenced by stream flows, seasons
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Flow rates and time of year must be taken into account to better understand the potential risks posed by emerging organic contaminants in rivers and streams, according to Penn State researchers who studied contaminant concentrations and flow characteristics at six locations near drinking water intakes in the Susquehanna River basin.
While many studies have looked at the levels of emerging organic contaminants such as pharmaceuticals and pesticides in rivers and their effect on aquatic life, this is one of the first projects to closely correlate pollutant levels with flows, noted researcher Heather Preisendanz, associate professor of agricultural and biological engineering.
Virtual Farm Interactive Tool
Explore the systems and components that make up modern dairy farms and learn how management practices impact sustainable production while addressing climate change challenges.
This virtual farms shows typical dairy farming practices for modern farming systems with 150 and 1500 cows. Each system can be investigated at a variety of levels by using the mouse to hover over a farm component. By drilling down deeper and deeper into the knowledge base, the user will gain a better understanding of how farm operations work.
A collaborative project between University of Wisconsin Madison, Penn State, Cornell University, University of Maryland, University of Michigan, North Carolina A&T, University of Washington, University of Arkansas, Innovation Center for US Dairy, and USDA-NIFA