OMAFRA offers handy software to estimate farm practices' potential for erosion

Thursday, November 26, 2015

by SUSAN MANN

Ontario agriculture ministry officials have adapted an American software program to Ontario conditions to help farmers estimate the potential for soil erosion on their farm using different land management and cropping practices.

Kevin McKague, agriculture ministry rural water quality engineer based in Woodstock, says the software, called the Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation or RUSLE2, is just for use on computers or laptops and not on tablets or cell phones. There are five interactive tutorials on the ministry website to help farmers use the RUSLE2.

McKague says crop advisers can also help farmers use the RUSLE2.

The universal soil loss equation was developed in the 1950s and included tables and statistical analyses to “come up with the key factors that influence soil erosion by water,” he says. The United States Department of Agriculture released the RUSLE2 in 2004.

McKague says the Americans developed the RUSLE2 to do soil conservation planning on farms. “We did a bit of that in the 1980s, but we haven’t been as strong in that as the Americans.” It’s also used by people trying to estimate the sediment load and phosphorus coming off fields.

“What we’ve done is we’ve adapted that American software tool to Ontario by putting in Ontario databases,” he notes. Instead of the weather stations in U.S. towns and cities, “we put in Ontario towns and cities. And we put in Ontario soil types along with typical practices and crops that we grow in Ontario.”

McKague says they “built the databases to drive the American-developed software.”

The software helps farmers compare relative differences in their land and cropping practices, such as spring plowing rather than fall plowing or switching to a different crop rotation, and determine what that would do to the soil loss rate of their fields, he says. BF