Accessibility Statement Skip Navigation
  • Why PRWeb
  • How It Works
  • Who Uses It
  • Pricing
  • Login
  • GDPR
  • Create a Free Account
Return to PRWeb homepage
  • News
  • Resources
  • Contact
When typing in this field, a list of search results will appear and be automatically updated as you type.

Searching for your content...

No results found. Please change your search terms and try again.
  • News in Focus
      • Browse News Releases

      • All News Releases
      • Multimedia Gallery

      • All Multimedia
      • All Photos
      • All Videos
  • Business & Money
      • Auto & Transportation

      • Aerospace, Defense
      • Air Freight
      • Airlines & Aviation
      • Automotive
      • Maritime & Shipbuilding
      • Railroads and Intermodal Transportation
      • Supply Chain/Logistics
      • Transportation, Trucking & Railroad
      • Travel
      • Trucking and Road Transportation
      • View All Auto & Transportation

      • Business Technology

      • Blockchain
      • Broadcast Tech
      • Computer & Electronics
      • Computer Hardware
      • Computer Software
      • Data Analytics
      • Electronic Commerce
      • Electronic Components
      • Electronic Design Automation
      • Financial Technology
      • High Tech Security
      • Internet Technology
      • Nanotechnology
      • Networks
      • Peripherals
      • Semiconductors
      • View All Business Technology

      • Entertain­ment & Media

      • Advertising
      • Art
      • Books
      • Entertainment
      • Film and Motion Picture
      • Magazines
      • Music
      • Publishing & Information Services
      • Radio & Podcast
      • Television
      • View All Entertain­ment & Media

      • Financial Services & Investing

      • Accounting News & Issues
      • Acquisitions, Mergers and Takeovers
      • Banking & Financial Services
      • Bankruptcy
      • Bond & Stock Ratings
      • Conference Call Announcements
      • Contracts
      • Cryptocurrency
      • Dividends
      • Earnings
      • Earnings Forecasts & Projections
      • Financing Agreements
      • Insurance
      • Investments Opinions
      • Joint Ventures
      • Mutual Funds
      • Private Placement
      • Real Estate
      • Restructuring & Recapitalization
      • Sales Reports
      • Shareholder Activism
      • Shareholder Meetings
      • Stock Offering
      • Stock Split
      • Venture Capital
      • View All Financial Services & Investing

      • General Business

      • Awards
      • Commercial Real Estate
      • Corporate Expansion
      • Earnings
      • Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG)
      • Human Resource & Workforce Management
      • Licensing
      • New Products & Services
      • Obituaries
      • Outsourcing Businesses
      • Overseas Real Estate (non-US)
      • Personnel Announcements
      • Real Estate Transactions
      • Residential Real Estate
      • Small Business Services
      • Socially Responsible Investing
      • Surveys, Polls and Research
      • Trade Show News
      • View All General Business

  • Science & Tech
      • Consumer Technology

      • Artificial Intelligence
      • Blockchain
      • Cloud Computing/Internet of Things
      • Computer Electronics
      • Computer Hardware
      • Computer Software
      • Consumer Electronics
      • Cryptocurrency
      • Data Analytics
      • Electronic Commerce
      • Electronic Gaming
      • Financial Technology
      • Mobile Entertainment
      • Multimedia & Internet
      • Peripherals
      • Social Media
      • STEM (Science, Tech, Engineering, Math)
      • Supply Chain/Logistics
      • Wireless Communications
      • View All Consumer Technology

      • Energy & Natural Resources

      • Alternative Energies
      • Chemical
      • Electrical Utilities
      • Gas
      • General Manufacturing
      • Mining
      • Mining & Metals
      • Oil & Energy
      • Oil and Gas Discoveries
      • Utilities
      • Water Utilities
      • View All Energy & Natural Resources

      • Environ­ment

      • Conservation & Recycling
      • Environmental Issues
      • Environmental Policy
      • Environmental Products & Services
      • Green Technology
      • Natural Disasters
      • View All Environ­ment

      • Heavy Industry & Manufacturing

      • Aerospace & Defense
      • Agriculture
      • Chemical
      • Construction & Building
      • General Manufacturing
      • HVAC (Heating, Ventilation and Air-Conditioning)
      • Machinery
      • Machine Tools, Metalworking and Metallurgy
      • Mining
      • Mining & Metals
      • Paper, Forest Products & Containers
      • Precious Metals
      • Textiles
      • Tobacco
      • View All Heavy Industry & Manufacturing

      • Telecomm­unications

      • Carriers and Services
      • Mobile Entertainment
      • Networks
      • Peripherals
      • Telecommunications Equipment
      • Telecommunications Industry
      • VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol)
      • Wireless Communications
      • View All Telecomm­unications

  • Lifestyle & Health
      • Consumer Products & Retail

      • Animals & Pets
      • Beers, Wines and Spirits
      • Beverages
      • Bridal Services
      • Cannabis
      • Cosmetics and Personal Care
      • Fashion
      • Food & Beverages
      • Furniture and Furnishings
      • Home Improvement
      • Household, Consumer & Cosmetics
      • Household Products
      • Jewelry
      • Non-Alcoholic Beverages
      • Office Products
      • Organic Food
      • Product Recalls
      • Restaurants
      • Retail
      • Supermarkets
      • Toys
      • View All Consumer Products & Retail

      • Entertain­ment & Media

      • Advertising
      • Art
      • Books
      • Entertainment
      • Film and Motion Picture
      • Magazines
      • Music
      • Publishing & Information Services
      • Radio & Podcast
      • Television
      • View All Entertain­ment & Media

      • Health

      • Biometrics
      • Biotechnology
      • Clinical Trials & Medical Discoveries
      • Dentistry
      • FDA Approval
      • Fitness/Wellness
      • Health Care & Hospitals
      • Health Insurance
      • Infection Control
      • International Medical Approval
      • Medical Equipment
      • Medical Pharmaceuticals
      • Mental Health
      • Pharmaceuticals
      • Supplementary Medicine
      • View All Health

      • Sports

      • General Sports
      • Outdoors, Camping & Hiking
      • Sporting Events
      • Sports Equipment & Accessories
      • View All Sports

      • Travel

      • Amusement Parks and Tourist Attractions
      • Gambling & Casinos
      • Hotels and Resorts
      • Leisure & Tourism
      • Outdoors, Camping & Hiking
      • Passenger Aviation
      • Travel Industry
      • View All Travel

  • Policy & Public Interest
      • Policy & Public Interest

      • Advocacy Group Opinion
      • Animal Welfare
      • Congressional & Presidential Campaigns
      • Corporate Social Responsibility
      • Domestic Policy
      • Economic News, Trends, Analysis
      • Education
      • Environmental
      • European Government
      • FDA Approval
      • Federal and State Legislation
      • Federal Executive Branch & Agency
      • Foreign Policy & International Affairs
      • Homeland Security
      • Labor & Union
      • Legal Issues
      • Natural Disasters
      • Not For Profit
      • Patent Law
      • Public Safety
      • Trade Policy
      • U.S. State Policy
      • View All Policy & Public Interest

  • People & Culture
      • People & Culture

      • Aboriginal, First Nations & Native American
      • African American
      • Asian American
      • Children
      • Diversity, Equity & Inclusion
      • Hispanic
      • Lesbian, Gay & Bisexual
      • Men's Interest
      • People with Disabilities
      • Religion
      • Senior Citizens
      • Veterans
      • Women
      • View All People & Culture

  • Hamburger menu
  • Cision PRWeb provides efficient communication tools to continuously engage with target audiences across multiple online channels
  • Create a Free Account
    • ALL CONTACT INFO
    • Contact Us


      11AM ET Sunday – 8PM ET Friday

  • Send a Release
  • Sign up
  • Log in
  • Resources
  • RSS
  • GDPR
  • News in Focus
    • Browse All News
    • Multimedia Gallery
  • Business & Money
    • Auto & Transportation
    • Business Technology
    • Entertain­ment & Media
    • Financial Services & Investing
    • General Business
  • Science & Tech
    • Consumer Technology
    • Energy & Natural Resources
    • Environ­ment
    • Heavy Industry & Manufacturing
    • Telecomm­unications
  • Lifestyle & Health
    • Consumer Products & Retail
    • Entertain­ment & Media
    • Health
    • Sports
    • Travel
  • Policy & Public Interest
  • People & Culture
    • People & Culture
  • Send a Release
  • Sign up
  • Log in
  • Resources
  • RSS
  • GDPR
  • Send a Release
  • Sign up
  • Log in
  • Resources
  • RSS
  • GDPR
  • Send a Release
  • Sign up
  • Log in
  • Resources
  • RSS
  • GDPR

Creating a Sustainable Future for the Chesapeake Bay Watershed and Its People

University of Maryland College of Agriculture and Natural Resources leads soil health, nutrient management, and water quality efforts in a rigorous 5-year study to develop environmentally sustainable agricultural systems in Maryland and the Chesapeake Bay Watershed.


News provided by

University of Maryland College of Agriculture and Natural Resources

Mar 24, 2020, 05:00 ET

Share this article

Share toX

Share this article

Share toX

The thriving urban agriculture study will look at how we can help mitigate environmental degradation in the Bay watershed while providing economic feasibility to farmers. Photo by Edwin Remsburg.
The thriving urban agriculture study will look at how we can help mitigate environmental degradation in the Bay watershed while providing economic feasibility to farmers. Photo by Edwin Remsburg.

COLLEGE PARK, Md., March 24, 2020 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- University of Maryland College of Agriculture and Natural Resources (AGNR) is collaborating with multiple universities, partners, farmers, and stakeholders from throughout the Chesapeake Bay watershed region in a 5-year sustainable agriculture systems study, led by Penn State College of Agricultural Sciences, and funded by a prestigious $9 million grant awarded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture (USDA NIFA).

This comprehensive, multi-institutional project entitled "Thriving Agricultural Systems in Urbanized Landscapes," and headed by principal investigator David Abler of Penn State, is an interdisciplinary framework developed to conduct practical research into sustainable agriculture practices that will mitigate environmental degradation in the Chesapeake Bay watershed while providing economic feasibility to farmers and farming communities for the long-term.

Considering the current pandemic and associated food shortages, research in food systems to determine the options available to city planners is a necessity.

Post this

Considering the current pandemic and associated food shortages, research in food systems to determine the options available to city planners is a necessity. Population growth, as well as sprawl, affects how people access food, and the availability of nutritious food and clean water. The unpredictability of other factors such as climate change and infectious diseases like the COVID-19 crisis, can further exacerbate issues of supply and demand.

"The goal we are envisioning is to predict what agriculture will look like in a rapidly urbanizing Chesapeake Bay watershed in 25 years; can we sustain the agriculture that already exists, and how we can advance our systems to go beyond where agriculture is today?" said Gurpal Toor, professor and extension specialist with the Department of Environmental Science and technology in AGNR, who is the grant team's expert on nutrient management and water quality.

Toor will be working with a diverse team including researchers from Penn State, Virginia Tech, University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, The Ohio State University, Nancy Nunn with the Hughes Center for Agro-Ecology, as well as Professor Ray Weil, preeminent soil scientist with AGNR. Recognizing that consumers within these urban communities value the local foods, open space, wildlife habitats, and agritourism associated with urban farm operations, the team of almost 20 scientists will create feasibility studies to maintain those systems in the face of intensifying competition for land, population sprawl, and water pollution.

Toor's part in this ambitious, multi-faceted project is to determine mass balances of nutrient distribution to farm fields -- the inputs and outputs of nitrogen and phosphorus -- essential nutrients needed to grow more fruitful yields of crops, but which can be detrimental to the Bay environment when introduced in excess.

Traversing across Maryland, Toor will assess mass balances of nutrients in farm fields for different regions to determine how much runoff occurs. "If we can do that, maybe there are inefficiencies in the production systems, where nutrients runoff because they aren't applied at the right time the plant needs them, or some other scenario," Toor said. "So the idea is to do a quantifiable study of mass balances, finding where they're inefficient and looking at the types of best management practices that could be implemented in those regions to reduce nutrient losses to receiving waters in Maryland and the Chesapeake Bay."

Ray Weil, a world-renowned soil scientist with AGNR, will lead a separate effort under the umbrella of the grant developing case studies on innovative farms in and around urbanized areas and looking at how management practices can protect soil and groundwater health.

"I've been working with a number of small, highly diverse, commercial farms that are doing some innovative things," said Weil. "This is a forward looking project so we will examine the progressive things those farmers are doing, like composting leaves collected by municipalities and community supported agriculture, to determine how successful those practices are, how those farms interact with the urban environment, and what are the environmental and soil health impacts."

Weil's project will also involve a second component using test plots at the Central Maryland Agricultural Research and Education Center. Also focusing on progressive farming techniques and soil health, the experimental plots will look at the impact of advanced cover cropping techniques and how they affect nutrient flows and groundwater quality.

"This is important because most of our studies on cover cropping are short term," said Weil. "We look and compare different cover crops, or no cover crop, and ask how this affects yields the following year. But this project will look at some of the benefits that carry over four or five years -- organic matter, improving the soil -- there's very little data on the long term effects of cover cropping."

The data derived from the field researchers like Weil and Toor will be compiled by modelers who will extrapolate that information to be effective throughout the Chesapeake Bay watershed region. Armed with these models and visualizations of potential future scenarios, the team will work with stakeholders who have a vested interest in the future of farming, urban agricultural systems, environmental and economic impacts, to make recommendations regarding how to move forward with policies that are acceptable and economically beneficial to communities.

This rigorous project also involves economists, and a human component that will be examined to better understand people's perceptions, said Toor. "There is a social dimension that comes into play into everything that we do to help ensure that the things we offer though research will be accepted by the larger community," he said. "We do all of this research, but when it comes to the cost to implement...it's useful information but can it be practically implemented? No one is willing or should have to take a financial loss."

While still in the beginning phases of the project, the end goal is to communicate that message to other farmers, says Toor. "We can't perform nutrient mass balance studies for every single field, but we will find similarities between environmental regions and provide best management practices that will be profitable by reducing unnecessary overfertilization," Toor said. "When we offer these best management practices to farmers, we're telling them that not only are you helping the health of the Bay, but it's also about sustaining agriculture and agricultural communities."

For more information on the USDA NIFA grant or the University of Maryland's role in this project, please contact Laura Wormuth, Communications Coordinator, University of Maryland Extension at [email protected].

SOURCE University of Maryland College of Agriculture and Natural Resources

Related Links

https://extension.umd.edu/

Modal title

Contact PRWeb

  • 11AM ET Sunday – 8PM ET Friday
  • Contact Us

About PRWeb

  • About PRWeb
  • Partners
  • Partnership Programs
  • Editorial Guidelines
  • Resources

Why PRWeb

  • Why PRWeb
  • How It Works
  • Who Uses It
  • Pricing

Accounts

  • Create a Free Account
  • Log in
  • Contact Us

Do not sell or share my personal information:

  • Submit via [email protected] 
  • Call Privacy toll-free: 877-297-8921

Contact Cision

Products

About

My Services
  • All News Releases
  • Online Member Center
  • ProfNet
Cision Distribution Helpline
888-776-0942
  • Legal
  • Site Map
  • RSS
  • Cookie Settings
Copyright © 2025 Cision US Inc.