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Abstract
Dairy manure operations such as flush facilities and storage lagoons result in the accumulation of large volumes of dilute liquid manure. Land application of liquid waste can recycle slurry by using nutrients for plant growth. However, high application rates of liquid manure has led to nutrient concentrations that exceed acceptable drinking water standards in underlying shallow groundwater in Georgia (Hubbard et al., 1987). During 1991-1994, the University of Georgia Coastal Plain Experiment Station and the USDA-ARS Southeast Watershed Research Laboratory conducted a study to measure the amount of nutrients in soil resulting from land application of dairy waste. The present study uses the Groundwater Loading Effects of Agricultural Management Systems (GLEAMS) Model to simulate nutrient movement within the root zone and compare it to the data gathered during the field study. The model was able to simulate concentrations within an order of magnitude. Research shows that GLEAMS should not be expected to provide mirror images of the real data but to represent the overall processes with reasonable accuracy since the modeling parameters were obtained from historical data.