A Nutrient Use Geographic Information System (NuGIS) for the U.S.

IPNI sees on-going assessment of nutrient balance and nutrient use efficiency in crop production as one of its responsibilities. That assessment is one of the two primary objectives of NuGIS. The other objective is to identify weaknesses in the process of doing that assessment.

Our goal in NuGIS is to put a face on nutrient use and nutrient use trends in the U.S. Once that face is developed, the “blemishes” in the developmental process should become more apparent and their significance better appreciated, with the hope that all of us involved in the process will collectively strive for improvements.

NuGIS integrates multiple data layers to create county-level estimates of nutrient removal by crops, fertilizer applied, and excreted and recoverable livestock manure nutrients. Nutrient balances and removal to use ratios were estimated for the five U.S. Agricultural Census years from 1987 through 2007. Data through 2009 will be available shortly. Geospatial techniques are used to migrate the county data to 8-digit hydrologic units for watershed evaluation. Results are viewable through an interactive color map or exportable as tabular data (see below).

In-depth methods are provided on the website to offer complete transparency into how the balance estimates are made and displayed. The intent of this transparency is to make the “blemishes” obvious so constructive criticisms can be collected and the need for any process improvements apparent. Interpretation of the results, other than a few summary bullets, is not done here. Future focused publications will emphasize interpretation.

To access the interactive features of NuGIS, click here.

Please submit comments or suggestions for improvement to nugis@ipni.net.