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Results of the ACT Study- Biofuels

Interview by Richard Coupe (U.S. Geological Survey) of Heather Welch-- a scientist involved in the National Water Quality Assessment (NAWQA) Study of Agricultural Chemical Transport (ACT)-- on her research results on environmental effects of biofuel production.

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Richard Coupe:

Today we're going to talk about the National Water-Quality Assessment program and part of a component of that is our Agricultural Chemical Transport study. This is a study looking at the effects of agriculture on water quality in seven different sites across the country. Today specifically though we're going to be talking about an area in Northwest Mississippi, our Mississippi alluvial plain that's commonly referred to as the Delta. And we're going to talk to some farmers, we're going to talk to some scientists and we're going to take a little bit of a tour of the Delta.

Heather, what part of the Agricultural Chemical Transport study have you really found to be interesting?

Heather Welch:

I think it was more of a spinoff from that project. It was � we started looking or we were asked to see if we could use the data that we had collected to see if the Biofuels Initiative had any impact on water quality and quantity in the Mississippi Delta.

Richard Coupe:

What was the Biofuels Initiative?

Heather Welch:

It was implemented by Congress in 2006, and it was to push to make gasoline� up to 15 percent of it needed to be ethanol-- and in America it's corn-based ethanol. And so we were able to see that between 2006 and 2007 there was a large conversion from cotton in the Delta, over 450,000 acres were converted from cotton to corn the following year in 2007.

Richard Coupe:

What were the significant results from this study?

Heather Welch:

So the results were we found that in that switch from 2006 to 2007 we increased the loss of storage in the aquifer. In the year 2007 we used more water than we would've used had it been in cotton like the year before. Also using the SPARROW model saw that we could be increasing the amount of nitrogen yield moving from the Yazoo River Basin into the Mississippi River and then on down to the Gulf of Mexico.

Richard Coupe:

Thanks.

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Duration: 2:52 minutes