The Manure and Soil Health (MaSH) Working Group was formed in 2016 through funding from a North Central Region Water Network (NCRWN) Extension and Capacity-Building Seed Funding Grant. The NCRWN is a 12-state collaboration among Extension water resource professionals and university, federal, state, NGO and industry partners (see www.soilhealthnexus.org).
The MaSH project is designed to facilitate assembly and distribution of the current state of knowledge on the role of manure in soil health improvement. As a component of this project, three mini-grants, each up to $4,000, were awarded to support post-doc, graduate or undergraduate student appointments to summarize the existing science and databases related to the role of manure in promoting soil health.
Distribution of mini-grants to students and their mentor(s) supported the project’s intent to collate information that the MaSH project team can use to identify existing knowledge and research gaps. In addition to producing a written scientific summary of the information reviewed, each mini-grant project was tasked with developing a high-quality summary of relevant information suitable for farmers and ranchers as well as their advisors.
The Soil Health Institute provided a supplement of $1,000 to each of the MaSH mini-grant awardees in return for permission to post the reports prepared for the MaSH Working Group on the Institute’s website and include the literature citations in the Soil Health Research Landscape Tool. The Institute is pleased to thank the MaSH Working Group and the grant recipients for their excellent partnership. The final products of these MaSH mini-grant projects are now available and can be accessed:
“Manure Land Application and Soil Health Factors”
Allen Haipeng Wang and Teng Lim
Food Systems and Bioengineering
University of Missouri
Report Data Brief
“Winter Manure Application: Management Practices and Environmental Impact”
Jason S. Smith, Rachelle Crow, and Steven I. Safferman
Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering
Michigan State University
Data Brief Research Needs
“Synthesis of Short- and Long-term Studies Reporting Soil Quality Metrics under Agricultural and Municipal Biosolid Applications”
Linda R. Schott and Amy Millmier Schmidt
Biological Systems Engineering and Animal Science
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Report Data Brief