Tile drainage
Collecting nutrient-rich irrigation water in reservoirs and pumping them back to crop fields during drought periods is an affordable practice and gaining increasing popularity among farmers in states like Iowa, Indiana, Ohio, Illinois and Minnesota.
[2] Advanced treatment techniques such as reverse osmosis are required to make water drainage suitable for reuse.
Reclaimed water in agriculture is a rapidly increasing practice, especially in arid states such as Texas, Nevada, Arizona, and California.
[7] According to the University of California Committee of Consultant's Water Quality Guidelines:[7] Roots of most crop plants require adequate air to prosper.
An additional reason for sub-surface drainage is to ensure sufficient soil firmness for tillage and other access by heavy machinery to tend and harvest a crop.
By installing tile drainage, the water table is effectively lowered and plants can properly develop their roots.
An increase in crop yield can be summarized as forcing plants to develop more roots so that they can absorb more nutrients and water.
Hydrotropism plays a role as root hairs at the dynamically probing tips of tree roots respond differentially to moister crevices versus drier ones, exchanging hormonal messages with the rest of the tree that encourage them to concentrate on advancing into such favorable niches.
In some regions farmers must do continual maintenance of tile drainage lines to keep them open and operating correctly, with at least some clearing every year in one or another part of the system.
For example, legislation in Indiana prompted a Federal statute in 1850 that provided for the sale of swamps at discount to farmers contingent on their drainage of the land and improvement of it for agricultural productivity.
To facilitate such improvement, most states instituted governmental agencies to regulate the installation of tile drainage.
The first successful mechanical trencher for drainage tile was James B. Hill's Buckeye Steam Traction Ditcher, invented in the late 1880s.
Towards the end of the twentieth century, when large, four-wheel-drive tractors became more common on American farms, do-it-yourself tile implements appeared on the market.
By making tile installation cheaper and allowing it to be done on the landowner's schedule, farmers are capable of draining localized wet spots that may not create enough of a problem to merit more costly operations.
Hundreds of thousands of wetland species experienced significant population declines as their habitat was increasingly fragmented and converted to other uses.
Although market hunting within the Central Flyway was a contributing factor in the decline of many waterfowl species' numbers in the early decades of the twentieth century, loss of breeding habitat to agricultural expansion is certainly the most significant.
Early maps of midwestern states depict many lakes and marshes that are nonexistent or significantly reduced in area today.
Channelization, a related process of concentrating and facilitating water flow from agricultural areas, also contributed to this degradation.
[citation needed] Tile drainage and the corresponding changes to the landscape - draining wetlands, wet soils, and channelizing streams – have contributed to more erosive rivers.
[citation needed] Drainage tile sometimes decreases soil erosion and runoff of some nutrients, including phosphorus.
Injecting effluent directly into the ground is one method manure applicators employ to improve nutrient uptake.
