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P Index Software for P Loading Risk Assessment
Drs. Robert Hill, Frank Coale and Patricia Steinhilber are the PI’s. Financial support is provided through a grant from Maryland Dept. of Envir. Nutrient Reduction Oversight Committee with funding at $297,865. The duration of the project was from 1998-2002.
The Water Quality Improvement Act of 1998 mandated that a Phosphorus Site Index (PSI) would be formulated and calibrated for Maryland conditions. Frank Coale and associates accepted this challenge; received funding from the source listed above, and developed a Phosphorus Site Index for this purpose. The likelihood of successful implementation of the PSI was doubtful unless software could be developed that would facilitate its use. The funding from the above grant in collaboration with nutrient management software development funding received from the Maryland Department of Agriculture allowed establishment of the UMD Nutrient Management Software Laboratory to address software development needs in Maryland.
The Maryland Phosphorus Index Properties for Soils (PIPS) was released in January 2000. The Maryland PSI requires extensive use of soil properties information. The USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service in Maryland indicated during the summer of 1999 that there were insufficient printed copies of soil surveys for many Maryland counties to meet perceived needs. The PIPS program is an information reporting interface for locating soil characteristics used in calculating the Maryland PSI.
The Maryland PSI software was released in April 2001. The PSI software allows for easy calculation of the Maryland PSI after the user has gathered information concerning soil erosion losses. Soil information used in calculations has been queried on a county basis for all mapping units in Maryland from the USDA NRCS National Soils Information System database. The PSI software shortened the time for PSI calculation for a single field to less than 5 minutes that would otherwise have taken more than 45 minutes.
The Maryland PSI software was incorporated into the Nutrient Management for Maryland Software – Professional Edition (NuMan Pro) and released in April 2005. Nutrient Management for Maryland, Professional Edition serves as an updated and integrated version of the Nutrient Management for Maryland (NuMan MD) software program and the Maryland Phosphorus Site Index (PSI) software program. A simplified version of the Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation (RUSLE) software was incorporated into NuMan Pro in support of the Maryland PSI.
The Maryland PSI software is the only easy to use product currently available for calculating the PSI in Maryland. Development of the software allowed the early implementation of the PSI in Maryland. We were the first state to overcome the technical challenges of making such a product available to the general public.
For more information, contact Dr. Robert Hill
Last updated: 04/23/2009
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