APELSVOLL (NORWAY)

OPERATING INSTITUTE: Norwegian Institute for Agricultural and Environmental Research, Arable Crops Division.

MAIN PURPOSE: Production, soil properties, soil ecology, water pollution.

ECOSYSTEM TYPE: Agricultural site, cereals, grassland.

EXPERIMENTAL TREATMENTS: Soil management, organic and inorganic fertilisation, crop rotation.

LOCALISATION: 60.7040924916572 10.855751037597656

FACILITIES: The ExpeER site is a tile-drained 3.2ha experimental site on loam soil representing the Scandinavian inland climate zone. Six cropping systems, each with 2 replicates, are practiced on twelve 0.18ha blocks, each equipped for volume proportional sampling of drainage discharge and surface runoff. There are three systems with cash-cropping and three systems with both arable and fodder crops (both conventional and organic management).
Studies focus on yields and yield quality; nutrient leaching and runoff losses; food productivity versus environmental impact; pesticide drainage and runoff; economic aspects; nitrogen; phosphorus and potassium balances; soil microbial biomass; insect predators; environmental indices; economic risk assessment; soil structure and earthworm populations; exploring long-term effects of a range of cropping systems on production related properties (e.g. yields, yield quality, food productivity, soil physics and chemistry) and on the environment (soil biology, losses of nutrients and pesticides).
The tools for analysing the experimental data are now expanded to include life cycle assessments (LCA), and a first paper using this method has been written.
During 2013, the water measurement facilties were comprehensively changed. The  system of measuring the total drainage discharge from each farm (block) as a total, was altered so that discharge and related volume proportional sampling is performed at rotation plot level. There are four rotation plots per farm. This infrastructural change enables higher resolution analyses of water and nutrient dynamics to be made, as each crop in the rotations may be assessed separately.

CONTACT: A. KORSAETH (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) - A. KRISTOFFERSEN (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) 

RECENT PUBLICATIONS:
●  Korsaeth, A. 2012. N, P, and K budgets and changes in selected topsoil nutrients over 10 years in a long-term experiment with conventional and organic crop rotations. Applied and Environmental Soil Science:17 pages. doi:10.1155/2012/539582.
●  Korsaeth, A. 2008. Relations between nitrogen leaching and food productivity in organic and conventional cropping systems in a long-term field study. Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment 127: 177–188.