Revision of the USDA-NRCS Nutrient Management (Code-590) and the Potential to Include Adaptive Management Principles.

The USDA Nutrient Management (Code 590) conservation practice standard provides national guidance on nutrient management principles and activities to increase nutrient use efficiencies and reduce off-site transport losses of nutrients. Nutrient management planners and Technical Service Providers (TSPs) use Code 590 to assist in the development of site-specific nutrient management plans to budget and supply nutrients for plant production, while applying proper conservation practices that help maintain/improve soil, water, plant, and air quality. These principles are applied to inorganic and organic nutrient sources and need to be integrated with site-specific crop, soil and hydrologic properties. Incorporating the results of field-specific soil and plant tissue tests into a nutrient management plan is a complex process, in part due to the temporal variability that affects nutrient dynamics, nutrient cycling and the hydrological cycle.
            The nutrient management planning process can be augmented by the use of improved techniques that consider adaptive management. A key component of adaptive management is the post-mortem evaluation of a nutrient management plan, or parts of a plan, to improve crop nutrient utilization and reduce air, surface and leaching losses of nutrients. Nutrient Management (Code 590) standard already includes manure, and soil/plant tissue tests. However, a post-mortem evaluation to specifically improve a nutrient management plan over time has not been an explicit component of the standard. Development of a clearly defined adaptive management process for improving nutrient management planning could further protect natural resources and be beneficial to U.S. producers. We propose that the inclusion of adaptive management concepts into the practice standard will improve the benefits of higher use efficiencies and lower nutrient losses to the environment. NRCS is participating in a multi-state and multi-disciplinary coordinating committee on adaptive management to evaluate the potential benefits of adaptive management for nutrient management purposes across the US.