Resource assessment and removal analysis for corn stover and wheat straw in the Eastern and Midwestern United States – rainfall and wind-induced soil erosion methodology

摘要

The focus of this study was to develop a methodology to estimate “hectare-weighted”, county-level, cornstover and spring and winter wheat straw removable residue quantities in the USA for 1995 to 1997 in 37states (north-south line from North Dakota to Texas and all states east) such that tolerable rainfall and windsoil loss limits were not exceeded.The methodology developed and employed in this study was based on the Revised Universal Soil LossEquation (RUSLE) and the Wind Erosion eQuation (WEQ), which were used to predict individual countylevelcorn or wheat yields required at harvest to insure that the amount of soil loss would not exceed thetolerable soil loss limit. These yields were then compared to actual county-level corn or wheat yields todetermine the quantity of removable residue.Results of this study indicate an annual average of over 42 and 8 million metric tons (mmtons) of corn stoverand straw (spring and winter wheat), respectively (46.2 and 8.8 million tons) were potentially available forremoval between 1995 and 1997 in these 37 states.