Wetlands Project to Look at Drainage, Water Quality

The SSGA is working with the Saskatchewan Soil Conservation Association and the Glacier FarmMedia Discovery Farm near Langham on a project to develop and study a water drainage plan for the property.

The project is one of 11 agricultural water demonstration projects being funded by the Water Security Agency (WSA) under a $1 million program.

Greg Ottenbreit, the minister responsible for the WSA, made the announcement in July. The WSA will partner with 10 different stakeholder organizations to conduct the 11 projects.

The program will allow the agricultural and environmental communities to develop solutions and practices for managing water on agricultural land, while mitigating effects on the quality and quantity of water draining downstream.

The project being undertaken by SSGA, the Saskatchewan Soil Conservation Association and Glacier FarmMedia Discovery Farm will look at a 40-acre site on the farm. The site has permanent wetlands as well as lands that seasonally hold water from spring snow melt.

Blake Weiseth, the Discovery Farm’s Applied Research Lead, says they’ve worked with WSA to develop a drainage construction plan on the property.

“What that will do is consolidate a number of these smaller wetlands into a more permanent wetland on the property, or to another appropriately identified outlet on the property,” he said. Those activities are slated to happen this fall.

“Then we’re going to be following that up. Some fieldwork will happen this fall already, but largely next spring we’ll be starting a multi-year field study,” he said.

The project will look at what impact a well-designed drainage plan has when implemented in conjunction with other beneficial management practices, Weiseth said, and how effective that is for protecting water quality by reducing nutrient losses in runoff water.

“We’re very fortunate to be working with the Saskatchewan Stock Growers on this project,” he said. “And really where our collective interest lies, is one of our treatments will look at what impact regenerative agriculture practices like poly-cropping, cover cropping, forage crops, that sort of thing has on protecting water quality.”

The treatment would include a mixture of species with legumes in the mix. “And the idea being with the legumes, of course, you would have a lower fertilizer application at seeding compared to a cereal or oilseed crop,” Weiseth said.

“And with that lower fertilizer application, you would expect a larger uptake and removal of nutrients from the soil, and subsequently a reduced pool of nutrients that is susceptible to runoff in that snowmelt water.” The project will demonstrate drainage techniques that take the amount of water into consideration, as well as the nutrient load the water is carrying.

Weiseth said Discovery Farm would like producers to have a look at the findings and implement what would work for them on their own operations.

“Part of the role of the project is to demonstrate how effective these practices are. We’ve designed them using commercial equipment and things like that, so the idea being that if a producer sees what we’re doing and becomes interested in it, they can quite readily adopt it and incorporate it into their own operation,” he said.

According to the WSA, each of the 10 funded projects will bring a different perspective on water management and will help contribute agronomic, environmental, infrastructure and economic expertise.

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