Good Experimental Designs

The St. Albans Bay (Vermont) RCWP project team found that the paired watershed design was the most effective design for documenting a linkage between land treatment and water quality changes in small watersheds over a relatively short time period. The paired watershed study confirmed that winter spreading of manure on corn land resulted in significantly higher nitrogen and phosphorus concentrations and loads in edge-of-field runoff compared to application of manure during the growing season only.