Managing drainage ditches for water quality

Excerpt

Agricultural drainage ditches are ubiquitous features in many landscapes and play a key role in the conservation of water resources. Credited with reclaiming lands that would otherwise be unfit for farming by rapidly routing water away from poorly drained areas, drainage ditches have also been fingered as conduits for pollution that short circuit natural flow pathways and filtration processes between fields and flowing waters. As management units, drainage ditches are vital to crop production yet generally considered outside the realm of most field management activities. As collection points for agricultural drainage water, ditches provide key opportunities for curtailing nonpoint source pollution. A growing body of work sheds light on fundamental hydrologic and biogeochemical processes in drainage ditches. Understanding these processes is essential to the development of management practices and strategies that protect downstream water quality.

The papers in this special section represent an array of studies and perspectives on agricultural drainage ditches, largely deriving from the “Managing Agricultural Drainage Ditches for Water Quality Protection” conference held in College Park, Maryland, on August 22, 2006, hosted by the University of Maryland College Park, USDA Agricultural Research Service, and University of Maryland Eastern Shore. Papers in this special section range …