The International Plant Nutrition Institute (IPNI) has just released the Nutrient Use Geographic Information System (NuGIS) with a county-by-county picture of nutrient removal by crops, fertilizer applied, and manure nutrients in the soil. NuGIS provides a picture of the nutrient balance as well as temporal trends over the past 20 years.
“IPNI sees on-going assessment of nutrient balance and nutrient use efficiency in crop production as one of its responsibilities. That assessment is one of the two primary objectives of NuGIS. The other objective is to identify weaknesses in the process of doing that assessment,” explains Dr. Paul Fixen, IPNI Senior Vice President and Director of Research. He has been the leader of the NuGIS effort. “Our goal in NuGIS is to put a face on nutrient use and nutrient use trends in the U.S. Once that face is developed, the ‘blemishes’ in the developmental process should become more apparent and their significance better appreciated, with the hope that all of us involved in the process will collectively strive for improvements.”
A detailed 60-page booklet titled, A Preliminary Nutrient Use Geographic Information System (NuGIS) for the U.S., is available for free PDF download or a paper copy can be purchased for US$25.00 at the IPNI website: www.ipni.net/nugis. Visitors to the website may also access the interactive on-line tool accessible via login here.
