SAVOY EXPERIMENTAL WATERSHED
A Collaborative Research Site for the Study of Animal Waste Management in Mantled Karst Terrains
CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations) allow for large numbers of birds to be raised during the same time interval. Each house can have from 20,000 to 30,000 birds, and the waste generated likewise can be huge.
This little heifer stands next to a deep well that has been drilled into the Everton Formation. It is sampled periodically to assess the degree of connection between the surface and downgradient springs.
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The karst area of the Springfield Plateau in northwestern and north-central Arkansas is subject to numerous and varied land-use practices that impact water quality. In this region of the U.S., animal production and human activities concentrate wastes within an environmentally-sensitive karst hydrogeologic setting.
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The karst ground-water system is underdrained by carbonate rock aquifers that have been dissolved to form an open network of caves, enlarged fractures, bedding planes, conduits, sinkholes, swallets, sinking streams, and springs. Flow in these aquifers is typically rapid, flow directions are difficult to predict, interaction between surface and ground water is typically extensive, and processes of contaminant attenuation that characterize many other ground-water settings are typically absent (White, 1988; Ford and Williams, 2007).
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Some of the most environmentally-sensitive water-quality issues in the Springfield Plateau deal with nutrients and microbes, most notably, with elevated amounts of phosphate, nitrate, bacteria and other microorganisms that are transported into shallow ground-water aquifers and bodies of water in contact with the aquifers (Peterson et al., 2000).
OBJECTIVES
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Research – Develop a long-term karst site with a focus on quantifying process-oriented research controlling influences of flow and transport in heterogeneous, anisotropic media; in-situ tracer testing and validation; vadose-zone process delineation; new and innovative equipment and methodology testing and verification; beta test site for new borehole-geophysical technologies; quantification of hydrologic-budget components at a watershed scale; environmental impacts of specific land uses.
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Collaboration -- Invite collaboration across disciplines, agencies, and sites by using SEW to maximize research funding through shared infrastructure.
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Education and Demonstration – Train future professionals in hydrology, engineering, geochemistry, environmental dynamics, ecology, microbiology, policy, and communications.
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Outreach – Sharing of knowledge with landowners, legislators, scientists, students of all ages, and the general public.
This study site offers extraordinary promise to address meaningful, relevant questions of land use and agricultural practices on water quality. We feel our preliminary studies are a valuable aspect of site characterization that will allow water-quality process delineation, and will give us new tools necessary to effectively manage our land and water resources in this part of the State, the region, and Nation. Certainly the accessibility, costeffectiveness, existing infrastructure, and interagency and interdisciplinary collaboration portend a long life with high potential for technology transfer. We also hope to develop the site into an ongoing outreach and training facility, thereby investing the knowledge we gain from our studies here back into our “communities”. Our communities include not only groups like yours, but students from K-12, undergraduate and graduate University students, managers, legislators, scientists, and the general public.
