Download or read book Assessing the Effects of Lake Dredged Sediments on Soil Health written by Russell D. Brigham and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 52 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Annually, nearly 1.5 million tons of sediments are dredged from Lake Erie, Ohio. The main method of dredged sediment disposal is open lake disposal. Open lake disposal poses a threat to water quality by re-suspending nitrogen and phosphorus-rich sediments. The Ohio State Senate passed a bill to prohibit the practice of open water disposal after July 2020 and recommends finding alternatives uses of the dredged sediment. One alternative is to use the sediment as an amendment for farm soil. This research aimed to measure the health of soil amended with various dredged sediment ratios, determine nutrient dynamics when the soil blends were subjected to induced storm-events, and quantify the effect of dredged sediment on soybean belowground biomass and yield. We used de-watered dredged sediment from the Great Lakes Dredged Material Center for Innovation and farm soil from a legacy phosphorous (P) farm site in Oregon, Ohio. Soil analysis was conducted on the two soils for baseline data. The soils were thoroughly mixed and separated into four different soil blends; 100% farm soil, 90% farm soil to 10% dredged sediment, 80% farm soil to 20% dredged sediment, and 100% dredged sediment and placed into 32 mesocosms. Soybeans were planted in half of the mesocosms. Daily watering and five random seasonal storm events were conducted during the growing season using synthetic rainwater. After 123 days, the soybean plants were harvested, and soil cores were collected for analysis. Physico-chemical analyses were conducted on the soil, plant biomass, and percolated stormwater. Results showed that dredged sediment amendment improved the quality of the farm soil by providing additional soil organic matter, increasing the cation exchange capacity and decreased P concentration in the legacy P farm soil. Nutrient loss (phosphorous and nitrogen) in the percolated solutions showed no significant changes when compared to the percolated solutions in the 100% farm soil treatment, indicating no significant contribution to the export of nutrients into waterways. Our study showed that adding dredged sediment to farm soil improved the farm soil health and showed no negative environmental impacts with respect to additional nutrient loss.