Award Data

The environmental impacts of coal bed methane development (CBM) in Montana and the Rocky Mountain States are well documented. CBM exploration is expanding rapidly with the nation's focus on energy independence and the relative ease of extraction. Extraction of CBM necessitates pumping large volumes of often saline discharge waters to the surface. The impacts of those waters include: reductions in ...

Concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) continue to experience every increasing pressure regarding nutrient overloads and air and water environmental concerns on their farms. Additionally the producers are subject to every growing and skyrocketing fuel and fertilizer costs. This USDA SBIR Phase I project aims to demonstrate an innovative technology that recovers ammonia nitrogen from CAFO a ...

Forest insect pests cause significant economic and ecological damage every year. Dramatically increased pest activity in recent years suggests that changing climate conditions will inflate the uncertainty associated with pest risk assessments. Advances in forest pest risk analysis methodology are needed to allow managers to better explore the consequences and value of alternative management scenar ...

Beekeeping is a billion dollar industry, of which honey production plays only a small part. Most beekeepers make their money with crop pollination, charging up to $120 per hive for this service. Crop growers want healthy, strong colonies. It takes a skilled beekeeper about 10 minutes to inspect a colony; the Colony Health Scanner performs the same function in about 2 minutes, and can be operated b ...

Foreign petroleum constitutes more than 60% of the oil used in the United States, and although significant strides are being taken to ensure future independence for fuel needs, the 10% of petroleum imports that are used as feedstock to produce materials are typically ignored. High density petrol-foams such as Divinycell or H1, are commonly used in products from vehicle panels to wind turbine blade ...

Tens of millions of tons of prunings, land clearing debris, logging slash, and urban greenwood are chipped or ground each year as a means of volume reduction and disposal. Commingled chipped whole plant materials have little value other than as compost, mulch and direct combustion energy. Capture of clean wood fiber from commingled shredded and chipped wood will increase the fiber supply to compos ...

[Situation or Problem] Huanglongbing (HLB), or "Citrus Greening" disease, increasingly raises costs to growers and threatens to impact 100% of Florida citrus acreage by 2016. Early detection and control of this disease is essential to the survival and productivity of the Florida citrus industry. [Purpose] To conduct Proof-of-Concept testing of DATASTAR's remote sensing and GIS approach designed to ...

The channel x blue hybrid catfish has been documented as a superior animal for use by the catfish industry. To produce the hybrid a hormnone is used to help ovulate the eggs so they can be stripped from the female. Once the eggs are stripped from the female they are fertilized with sperm from the blue catfish and hatched in a manner sililar to channel catfish eggs. Carp pituitary has been used suc ...

SITUATION/PROBLEM: In the U.S., manual-move irrigation (hand-lines and wheel-lines, ~ 70% efficient) is employed on 5 million acres and furrow/gravity irrigation (~55% efficient) is employed on 23 million acres. Much of these lands comprise high-value crops and/or parcels shaped other than square or circle. For example, California has 5.7 million gravity-irrigated acres, mostly high value crops. C ...

BVDV is a highly contagious disease that affects ruminant livestock. The virus is spread among cattle, is found in most parts of the world and is considered a high priority by the USDA. BVDV affects nutrition, milk production, respiratory and reproduction functions of cattle. BVD can suppress the immune system thus increasing susceptibility to pneumonia, diarrhea (scours), and reproductive failure ...