Brief Summary of Minutes of Annual Meeting

Project/Activity Number: SERA17
Project/Activity Title: Organization to Minimize Nutrient Loss from the Landscape

Period Covered: 1 October 2021 – 30 September 2022
Date of this Report: December 1, 2022
Annual Meeting date: August 9-10, 2022

Summary and Minutes of the Annual Meeting

The 2022 annual SERA-17 meeting was held in Crookston, MN, hosted by Lindsay Pease, University of Minnesota. The meeting was opened by Merrin Macrae, University of Waterloo (Chair), and Lindsay Pease, University of Minnesota (Chair-elect and meeting host) at 8:45 AM CT. The meeting included a day of seminars (Day 1) followed by a ½ day business meeting and ½ day field tour (Day 2). Although the meeting was in-person, the seminar presentations were also shown to virtual attendees on Zoom. Amy Shober (University of Delaware) moderated the Zoom chat and asked questions from the Chat to speakers. The meeting was not recorded. There were 26 attendees in Crookston, plus an additional 20 who listened in on Zoom.

Participants: Approximately 26 attendees were present in Crookston, with an additional 20 who attended via Zoom.

Brief summary of minutes of annual meeting:

The full meeting minutes can be found at: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-4YK83SpWph2AksQgzJf15PA6OmI2g9k/view

A brief summary is provided here.

Discussion Topic 1: Legacy P in the Environment

This session revolved around the presence of legacy P in the environment and showcased some important questions being addressed by the SERA-17 community related to this topic. Stephanie Kulezsa (NC State) began the session by updating the group on the current discussions related to legacy P and the need to refine our definition of “Legacy P”. Jennifer Davies, Lancaster University spoke on the topic of simulating the capacity of legacy soil P to maintain long-term crop productivity under reduced P fertilizer inputs. Phil Haygarth, Lancaster University spoke on the topic of the Changing Phosphorus Cycle. Andrew Tweedie, Lancaster University spoke about how organic carbon additions affect phosphorus solubility in agricultural soils.

Discussion Topic 2: Phosphorus Dynamics and Management Challenges in the Northern Great Plains (NGP)

There was a strong regional focus to this session given the location of the meeting. The meeting host, Lindsay Pease, University of Minnesota began the session by providing an overview of production in the region and some of the issues that are a challenge with regards to nutrient management and water quality. Don Flaten, University of Manitoba (retired) spoke on “Balancing Agricultural Productivity and Water Quality with P Management in the Northern Great Plains”. Henry Wilson, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada spoke on “Hydrodynamic controls on P dynamics in the Northern Great Plains”. David Lobb, University of Manitoba – spoke on “The importance of crop residues and residue management in P dynamics in the NGP” Jeppe Kjaersgaard, spoke on “Monitoring P Loss Timing and Pathways”.

Discussion Topic 3: Targeting of BMPs for Phosphorus Reduction: Regional Case Studies

This session followed from the previous session that highlighted the challenges faced by the Northern Great Plains, and demonstrated the fact that BMPs that are effective in some regions can have unintended consequences or differences in their efficacy in this region due to the climate and landscape of the region. This session highlighted the need to optimize or target BMPs for different regions and demonstrated lessons learned from different key regions. Amy Shober (Delaware, MD) began with a discussion of the Chesapeake Bay. Merrin Macrae (Waterloo, ON, Canada) provided an overview of the Lake Erie watershed. Mark Deutschman provided insight into optimizing BMPs in Minnesota.

Session 4: Poster Session and General Discussion

This session began with lightning talks from graduate students and early career researchers (ECRs). This is something that can be done during future meetings to allow ECRs to showcase their work and introduce themselves to the group. These opportunities foster networking and the continued growth/replenishment of the membership of the SERA-17 group. Following this, there was a general discussion regarding the day’s seminars.

Business Meeting

Minutes of the meeting were recorded by Merrin Macrae and MSc student Julie DePauw (U. Waterloo).

Administrator’s Report: Dr. Nathan McKinney, University of Arkansas

Nathan began by noting that SERA17 is a collegial group. Everyone is well-trained, and we do great things. However, we would all benefit on how to achieve “excellence” as a multi-state group (Excellence = What we do together that we cannot do separately). He noted that there are Excellence in Multi-State Awards, and he provided an overview of the 12 measures of excellence. He provided advice on how SERA-17 can improve. His suggested areas of improvement included our mission (the wording could be stronger), our goals and objectives (are they still relevant? Put something measurable with each goal), our website (add photos) and he suggested that we could consider having committees for publications, metrics, social media/communications.

Group Discussion Regarding the Past, Present and Future SERA-17

We must renew (5 year renewal) this year, which permitted us to have a discussion of where we as a group wish to move in future. Amy Shober (Delaware) (with contributions from Deanna Osmond) began by providing an overview of the past 20 years of SERA-17, emphasizing the focus of attention and the structure of meetings. There was discussion surrounding who we are as a community, what our goals are now (and should be in future) and how our meetings should be structured. It was felt that as a group, we tend to tackle uncertainty issues, cutting edge topics; this ultimately translates to knowledge outside of this group. There is significant leadership from this group and high-quality outputs. Many key publications/products have resulted from the SERA-17 meetings and community and there was a desire for this to continue.

There was also discussion around our membership and ensuring that our graduate students and partners continue to engage. SERA-17 has always been an excellent place for networking and this should continue. Many of our members engage with other groups outside of SERA-17. While SERA-17 must remain autonomous as an organization, we should explore opportunities for synergies with some of these groups on key issues where appropriate.

            There was discussion on the role of the working groups. Some of these groups have been dormant for several years and it was suggested that such groups are ‘retired’ unless they are actively working on an issue. Working groups should be meeting quarterly in a given year (virtually) and have targeted objectives that lead to tangible outputs.

There was also discussion regarding the Executive. At present, we have a past chair, chair and chair elect but no committees, or formal executive outside of this. Given that it is difficult to recruit a new chair each year, we shifted to having 2-year positions. This means that two years as Chair-elect, two years as Chair and two years as past chair. If this is too onerous, we can go back to single years (i.e., 3 years overall). It was suggested that a schedule could be generated (i.e., reminder this time of year, announce conference by this date). If we have other subcommittees, this can be a way to get introduced to organization and eventually a chair position. We could have a steering committee to help with engagement (rather than just the trio of chairs) – members at large (e.g. scope of meetings, help planning).

Updates for Workgroups

• BMP and Modelling groups: no updates. Action: these groups will be retired unless new activities commence.
• Legacy P group: a paper is currently underway on defining “Legacy P”. This paper is really highlighting the ‘need’ to better define the term but is not an exhaustive review. Action: members are encouraged to initiate a more comprehensive review of Legacy P.
• Testing workgroup – this group is looking at updating the methods manual for P analysis - soil, water, wastewater which was published in 2009. Action: Kovar and Cade-Menun will consider updating it with new chapters on organic P analysis. There was discussion on how such a manual should be published (Hardcopy, or online PDF, or methodology section on website with chapters, or publish open access and link it). This will be discussed by the group as they move forward. This team will also need a review team, and possibly a grant to publish, copy editor
• P drawdown group - Luke Gatiboni sent comments via email. This group is workingto gather data from published P drawdown studies. During the first semester of 2022, they selected 27 papers, and now the data are being extracted from those papers for analysis. Once the data from graphs and figures are extracted, the group will perform a meta-analysis and decision tree analysis looking for the strongest predictors of P drawdown pace, like soil type, crops, management, etc. They expect to have the data analyzed and the writing process starting before the tri-society meeting in November 2022.
• A workgroup will be formed for the Next 5 year plan/renewal. This will include both established and newer members – Deanna, Merrin, Lindsay have stepped forward so far.

There was discussion around potential new workgroups. This included:

• new website workgroup – the old one is still up and should be retired but it contains information that we need. Moving forward, we need redundancy, 2 people to manage. continuity
• grant application – we should get a group together to apply for Excellence in Multi-State Award.
• improving our use of communications – social media
• fine-tuning P processes in the watershed models (e.g. P sources in SWAT)
• P index as risk mitigation tool – there is a need for field-based assessment to choose the optimum BMP (switch from how bad you are, to what can be done)
• Snowmelt focused (like rainfall simulator work), climate or climate change
• Assemble water quality data that we already have
• True validation of P index for a particular region e.g. plateau – do we have the expertise to guide how to validate this (do we have the existing data already, or how to collect data to feed into these efforts)?

Future meetings:

In years with a summer meeting, we often skip having a meeting with the tri-societies.

2023-St. Louis, MO, Oct. 29-Nov. 1

2024-San Antonio, TX, Nov. 10-13

Accomplishments:

The 2022 SERA-17 meeting brought together approximately 46 participants (some virtually), including several graduate students, with diverse backgrounds from the U.S., Canada and the UK. Discussion centered on three topics: Legacy P in the landscape, issues surrounding water quality in the Northern Great Plains, and approaches to targeting conservation practices in different regions. Considerable interest was expressed on these topics and a vibrant discussion followed all three sessions. We included “Lightning Sessions” for graduate students presenting posters, and propose that this is included in future meetings.

Impact:

SERA-17 members have a long history of tackling complex problems and developing solutions for better managing P and other nutrients and protecting the environment. The SERA-17 community has demonstrated leadership in key issues related to phosphorus and agriculture. For example, the ongoing discussion among SERA-17 members with regional soil testing is contributing to the development of a database of soil test P correlation and calibration data, and ultimately, the Fertilizer Recommendation Support Tool. Several SERA-17 members recently published work related to trade-offs in various conservation practices. NRCS conservation practice documents will be updated with information about trade-offs farmers should consider when implementing specific practices. The SERA-17 community has also led important discussions regarding Legacy P in various areas of the environment and the impacts of this P in the environment. Discussions held at this year’s meeting contributed to a paper related to Legacy P in the environment. The community also demonstrated advancements in the targeting of conservation practices, which can also be included in the NRCS conservation practice documents. The knowledge disseminated from SERA-17 benefits scientists, Extension personnel, consultants, regulatory agencies, farmers, and the general public.

Short-term Outcomes and Outputs: Recent progress by members of the SERA-17 community is contributing to the updating of the SERA-17 factsheets, to be done over the next year.

Key Publications:

Kleinman, P.J., Osmond, D.L., Christianson, L.E., Flaten, D.N., Ippolito, J.A., Jarvie, H.P., Kaye, J.P., King, K.W., Leytem, A.B., McGrath, J.M., Nelson, N.O., Shober, A.L., Smith, D.R., Staver, K.W., Sharpley, A.N. 2022. Addressing conservation practice limitations and trade-offs for reducing phosphorus loss from agricultural fields. Agricultural and Environmental Letters. 7(2). Article e20084. https://doi.org/10.1002/ael2.20084.

Macrae, M., Jarvie, H., Brouwer, R., Gunn, G., Reid, K., Joosse, P., King, K., Kleinman, P., Smith, D., Williams, M. and Zwonitzer, M., 2021. One size does not fit all: Toward regional conservation practice guidance to reduce phosphorus loss risk in the Lake Erie watershed. Journal of Environmental Quality, 50(3), pp.529-546.

Williams, M.R., Welikhe, P., Bos, J., King, K., Akland, M., Augustine, D., Baffaut, C., Beck, E.G., Bierer, A., Bosch, D.D. and Boughton, E., 2022. P‐FLUX: A phosphorus budget dataset spanning diverse agricultural production systems in the United States and Canada. Journal of Environmental Quality, 51(3), pp.451-461.

Liu, J., Elliott, J.A., Wilson, H.F., Macrae, M.L., Baulch, H.M. and Lobb, D.A., 2021. Phosphorus runoff from Canadian agricultural land: A dataset for 30 experimental fields. Data in Brief, 38, p.107405.

Authorization: Submission by an AES or CES director or administrative advisor through NIMSS constitutes signature authority for this information.

*Limited to three pages or less exclusive of publications, details may be appended.