A new study looks at the air quality implications of farming practices that conserve water, reduce erosion and improve sustainability.

Results could guide future land-use decisions, help water managers prioritize methods for conserving dwindling irrigation supplies and justify program incentives for agricultural sustainability practices, according to a University of Idaho news release.

Alex Maas, UI associate professor of agricultural economics and rural sociology, leads the study. He and colleagues aim to determine how weather, farming practices, harvest timing, and land-use factors unrelated to agriculture align to affect air quality and human health.

In states such as Colorado and California, irrigators have faced broad curtailments due to drought-related water shortages. As a result, many farmers have left more land fallow and shifted toward low-water crops. Irrigated farmland also is being rapidly lost to development.

“The goal is to see the unintended consequences of our land-use decisions broadly, and this does have a lot of implications as we’re trying to deal with this water scarcity crisis out West,” Maas said in the release. “We’re looking at all land because you need to control for highways and cities and places that create a lot of pollution of their own, but we’re only trying to investigate changes in agricultural land.”

Hundreds of thousands of daily readings from networks of air quality sensors west of the Mississippi River, dating back more than two decades, will be analyzed. Sensor data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s air quality network and the Purple Air private network also will be used.

Data analysis will include noting agronomic practices and land-use decisions occurring in a pie-shaped area upwind of each sensor associated with a daily reading. The data in aggregate should tell researchers about how air quality is affected by specific farming practices and what to expect when farmers change them, according to UI.

No-till and reduced tillage, converting to more efficient irrigation technology and planting cover crops to reduce erosion and improve soil health are among sustainable farming practices used.

“These choices are all connected, and as we’re trying to conserve water and potentially changing these choices, how can we incentivize and disincentivize activities that have implications far beyond the borders of your operation?” Maas said. “If we suddenly see no-till is having this big impact on what we’re picking up with these air quality sensors, now let’s go and try to figure out what the mechanism is and how we can encourage that, or maybe come up with new technologies.”

He will work with associate professor and climate epidemiologist Jim Crooks of National Jewish Health, and Colorado State University researchers Jude Bayham and Jeffrey Pierce. Bayham specializes in air quality and wildfires. Pierce is a professor of atmospheric science.

Maas proved the concept with a $200,000 seed grant from USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture and received a four-year,$800,000 NIFA grant to broaden his research.