Project Number: 3604-13000-008-10
Project Type: Specific Cooperative Agreement

Start Date: Jun 29, 2004
End Date: Sep 30, 2007

Objective:
To quantify and compare the amount, timing, and quality of water discharging from managed and unmanaged drainage systems in Illinois.

Approach:
Locate four pairs of subsurface drainage systems so that both members of a pair have similar drainage area, soil types, topography, and agronomic management such that one system is managed to control the drainage discharge and the other is not controlled and freely draining. Install instruments to measure the amount and timing of drain flow and to collect proportional samples of the discharge from both systems at each location during flow events. Analyze the water samples for nutrient concentrations (N & P). Tabulate the hydrologic and water quality data and store it in electronic and hard copy formats.