Off-campus South Dakota State University users: To download campus access theses, please use the following link to log into our proxy server with your South Dakota State University ID and password.

Non-South Dakota State University users: Please talk to your librarian about requesting this thesis through interlibrary loan.

Document Type

Thesis - University Access Only

Award Date

2015

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department / School

Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering

First Advisor

Todd P. Trooien

Abstract

Vegetative treatment systems (VTS) are analyzed as a possible alternative to holding ponds to manage runoff from cattle feedlots. This study was conducted to validate a VTS model with the previously measured data from a Minnehaha County VTS Site, South Dakota. The performance of VTS was evaluated by determining water inflow, outflow, precipitation and mass inflow, outflow on vegetative treatment areas (VTA). The balances were determined by using all VTA inflow, outflow, nutrient concentrations of the inflow water, and the soil nutrient concentrations within the VTA. Seven years have been completed in simulating VTS data for the Minnehaha County site in South Dakota. There were two years of measured data for the Minnehaha County site to use in comparison to the simulated data. There were no simulated surface water releases from the VTA during the simulation period from 2007 to 2013. The VTS was fully successful in preventing surface water releases. The simulated nitrate concentration, total Kjeldahl nitrogen concentration, and total phosphorus concentration in the water for the Years 2009 and 2010 were compared with measured data. All demonstrated close similarity to the measured data, indicating that the model accurately simulated the performance of the VTS. All of these results indicate that VTS has potential to become a treatment system for the containment of both water and nutrients in feedlot runoff.

Library of Congress Subject Headings

Feedlot runoff -- South Dakota -- Management Agricultural wastes -- South Dakota -- Management

Description

Includes bibliographical references

Format

application/pdf

Number of Pages

59

Publisher

South Dakota State University

Share

COinS
 

Rights Statement

In Copyright