Prototyping NUGGET: A Nutrient and Greenhouse Gas Evaluation Tool

Farmers, crop consultants, and regulators are constantly faced with management/policy decisions that require the integration of current crop and soil conditions, and current and future weather conditions. Farmers and crop consultants must make these management decisions within a regulatory environment that is becoming more restrictive and complex. Regulators are forced to make policy recommendations without sufficient understanding of the environmental processes they are attempting to regulate. In short, evaluating alternative management strategies that account for the broad variability in agro-ecosystems can be difficult given the complex processes impacting soils and crops within climatic conditions and farming practices. Dynamic, process modeling can be an effective tool for assisting farmers in effective management strategies to enhance profitability while protecting the environment. The purpose of this project is to prototype a web-based decision support tool that will provide crop consultants, farm managers, and policy makers with the technical tools for the evaluation of site-specific best management practices. This tool will utilize geographic information system (GIS) capabilities to capture spatial and temporal variability in agricultural, environmental, and climatic conditions, and will be implemented within a user interface on the internet. NUGGET will assist users in developing management strategies that minimizing nutrient and pesticide leaching, ammonia volatization, and greenhouse gas emissions.