On October 12, USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service-PA announced nearly $300,000 has been awarded to four Conservation Innovation Grant (CIG) projects in Pennsylvania.

“Conservation Innovation Grants are critical for developing science, technology and innovative tools to address natural resource concerns on Pennsylvania’s private working lands,” said State Conservationist Denise Coleman. “These grants help bridge the gap between initial product development and taking that product or approach to market. The overall goal is to incorporate new innovations into NRCS technical manuals and make them available to the agricultural community.”

Administered through NRCS, CIG is part of the Environmental Quality Incentives Program. Projects may include on-farm pilot projects and field demonstrations, and are funded to accelerate the transfer and adoption of promising technologies to landowners in order to address critical natural resource concerns.

The selected CIG projects in Pennsylvania for fiscal year 2022 include:

-- Water Science Institute $75,000, Legacy Sediment 3.0: Stream, Wetland, and Abandoned Mine Land Soil Partnership - This project will examine the opportunities and challenges that re-purposing Legacy Sediment may present with Environmental Justice Communities as designated by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection

-- The Nature Conservancy-PA $72,828.00, Certified Prescribed Burn Manager Program Development - This project will develop a 3-day Certified Prescribed Burn Manager (CPBM) Training Workshop to be used to promote safe and effective private lands burning.

-- Capital Resource Conservation and Development Area Council, Inc. $73,943.93, Monitoring of Carbon Sequestration for Carbon Credit development - This project will demonstrate the use of a soil probe to continuously monitor soil organic Carbon, NPK, soil moisture, and soil temperature on a real time basis.

-- Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University $75,000, Assessing opportunities for On-Farms Bioenergy systems to enhance nutrient, carbon, and energy management options for poultry farmers in Pennsylvania - While on-farm bioenergy systems represent an opportunity to enhance nutrient, carbon, and energy management options for farmers, the system economics are not well understood creating a knowledge gap which challenges broader adoption. This proposal seeks to help address this knowledge gap.

For more information on CIG or other NRCS conservation programs that are available, visit the NRCS-PA webpage.

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[Posted: October 12, 2022]

10/17/2022