Fragipan Remediation

  • Murdock, Lloyd (PI)
  • Karathanasis, Anastasios (CoI)

Grants and Contracts Details

Description

This is an attempt to help solve a significant soil problem in Kentucky. The fragipan is a naturally occurring restrictive layer in about 2.7 million acres of Kentucky soils. The pan virtually stops water movement and root growth and its depth averages about 20-24 inches in these soil types in Kentucky. Therefore, it reduces the water holding potential in these soils to about one-half of that of many of our other crop producing soils. It also causes saturated soil conditions in the winter and spring that result in adverse conditions to crops growing during this time. Therefore, crop yields on these soils are reduced for a number of reasons. The fragipan itself is a silt loam soil that has been cemented. If the cementation is dissolved it would be very similar to the soil above it. The goal of this project is to try to dissolve the cementation and make a deeper soil that will hold more water for summer growing crops. The increased depth will also make this soil less prone to waterlogging in the winter which would make the soil better suited for winter crops and better support trafficking at this time of the year. The goal is to dissolve as least the top of the fragipan and improve crop production by 10% or more on about 1.5 million of cropable acres in Kentucky.
StatusFinished
Effective start/end date4/1/133/31/16

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