 Okay, well thank you everyone for sticking around for the for this part so one of the things that we've been trying to do over the last almost 10 years now is try to provide more education more information about how water moves in in soils that are negatively impacted by sodium and then contrarially how water moves in soils that are that are normal, as we would say. And so when we think about this demonstration and we think about what we're going to be learning today, I've passed around a sheet. And on that sheet, we're going to have different, different treatments, basically. So the orange one, which should be on my right, but your left. That one is a brine impacted soil that has a very high electrical conductivity, no plants will grow on this, but it also has a very high sodium concentration. And we'll talk about sodium in a little bit, but sodium is a natural dispersant and calcium is a flocculant. And so we're going to talk about how those will differ. And the green is the same soil, but now we're adding, we're starting to add calcium based treatments to those calcium is a flocculant calcium will help water move. And so the purple one, which is the same soil, but this time we're adding flue gas desulfurization gypsum and gypsum is a byproducts from coal combustion. Now in North Dakota. And so we have a reliable source of gypsum and we'll talk about that too. The one in the blue. This one is a the same soil, but we're adding a very high concentration of calcium to this soil. The calcium is going to counteract the negative effects of the sodium, but I just, it's a demonstration in how water will move through these different systems and why we need to think about adding calcium. If we're going to get water to move. The third one is a naturally sodic soil. Wade Bott is here today with our, he's our state soil scientist. We have in North Dakota probably five, six million acres of what it looks like in the yellow sodic soils. So these are natural across our landscape. They're very hard to manage, but I wanted to bring that and show you what that looks like. So this is a soil from the irrigation region down by Oaks 70% sand. We're going to make this soil, make the water content, make the water movement stop completely. Okay, so so that's going to be our objective here today. If one uses poor irrigation water quality. I'm going to show you what that looks like. So what I'm going to do is is we've already started the demonstration. And many of you know, I like to fish quite a bit. So we're going to put these, these highly fluorescent bobbers, which should be a nice gift if for the vendors here to give out fishing equipment sometime. Brenda. So, so we're going to add those to there. And so those are to help you sort of visualize how the water is moving. Okay, and I realize in back it's a little more difficult, but be assured that the rubber band. The rubber band was where the water started when we started the we started this demonstration. If you see the water moving below those that rubber band, that means the water is starting to move down through the soil. Okay, so just kind of keep that in a keep that in your mind. Okay, so what we have is what's called a rainmaker. No joke. That's really what it is. And so, we're going to look at that last one first, the one in the red. So that's an oak soil 70% sand. Nothing's wrong with it. It's a perfectly wonderful productive soil in that region, and it's down a bit. And that would be. We're going to add sodium chloride to that. We're going to flush it through so it's, it's just like adding Brian. So what do you think will happen when we add the sodium chloride through that system. Anybody. You think the water will stop or do you think the water will keep moving, but 10% of you have been in my class so let's see some hands here. You're just fine. Okay, you say well you got a lot of sodium. It's like well that's okay, because what's happening is that you have a lot of sodium but you also have a lot of electrical conductivity. There's a lot of ions in there. So, to get soils, what to get water to stop moving and in soils that sodium has to be high and the electrical conductivity has to be low. And if you have high sodium and high electrical conductivity. Life's okay. Water will move through just fine. When you start meant monkeying with those two high sodium low electrical conductivity. It's going to stop moving. And so we're going ahead and, and when I say we it's usually I have other people do it but I'll do it myself. So we got this rain maker. And part of that reason is to keep the soil from from washing up really quick 70% sand. Anybody needs to use a restroom go ahead. We're going to leave it there. So kind of keep your eye on on on the one in the red. Also, but this back in there. Okay, so we'll go ahead and make sure we start. The other thing is that we're going to talk about gypsum and we're going to talk it's calcium sulfate it's a common byproducts right now from the Leland Olds station here here and here in North Dakota, where they use coal to evaporate water to generate power. And so this is an app that we developed based on other information. We didn't make up the equation we used Dr. Jim Oster who was actually from Hazen. He's a phenomenal soil chemist spent his whole life in managing saline and sodic soils. So, go ahead and you, it's hard to believe there's only one of these in the app store. I mean, it's like you. I know, I know, but run the do gypsum requirement determination gypsum requirement determination it'll, I think, still the only one so. Okay, again, this is the demonstration that you're going to be looking at. I won't talk about this anymore. For now. Back to that same point right of this earlier I was, you know, with with the rules were expanded that we talked about the soil physical properties cone penetrometer resistance and bulk density and how water soil water related to that. Right now we're going to move way over to the to your right. And these are the soil chemical properties, electrical conductivity and sodium content. And these are the two things on the back of your sheet, I do believe you know when you print in color you have to use other people's copy code numbers. So, so thank you, faculty member X. We have one on one side but I also have that diagram on the bottom there for you to look at so. So what's the difference between saline soils and sodic soils. Okay saline soils. It's a common terminology. I've heard it be called soils being sick soils being alkali soils being sour. The terminology is generally gets to be the same but it helps if we use proper or the proper but at least common terminology. The minerals are those that contain elevated levels of chloride or sulfate salts of calcium magnesium sodium or potassium. So remember that calcium magnesium potassium sodium and potassium are positively charged. Those are cations, the negative charged anions commonly are chloride and sulfate. What is the what is the common anion and Brian. So that's why we can fire the fire of the path of where the where the Brian ends up. Okay, by definition. Salinity is the total concentration of dissolved mineral solids that are found in waters and soils. So it's our ionic compounds. When you put them in water they dissolve, they become ions. So that transfer the electrons, which give us the electrical conductivity of a soil. It's not the salts themselves by themselves is when they dissolve in the water. And they are they negatively affect plant growth. Contrarily, sodic soils. These are soils that are affected by the sodium ion. Okay, sodium is a natural dispersant calcium is a flocculant. Sodicity then is the accumulation of sodium. So when we think about Brian spills. It's both salinity, but it's also sodicity happening at the same time because you have a concentration of ions in the soil but you also have a excess amount of sodium. Most of the ones in natural conditions have low salinity. You look at, we can go north of Bellefield, Sam and I did this one time we took a left turn off the road and we found a bunch of sodic soils. Hard as a rock. Very low electrical conductivity, but they were very, very sodic. Okay, so again have low concentration of soil salts. They can cross, they can restrict root penetration, but naturally when these things get wet, there may not be a bottom to them, you will literally feel like okay this is going to stop sometime okay stop. And that's how it normally is. And so, not normally but but it but it certainly does happen. And so, so here's a good example this is a, this is a Brian spill. This is a, an example of what high amount of salinity my look like that's all whites, just like we're seeing out here today. But it was actually in June. And so, how that this has a negative effects for for for plant plant growth on the bottom it's the salinity. And on the on the on the y axis is the relative yield or the relative growth. And so as you can see as the salinity moves to the right plant productivity goes down. And that's all plant species that we have in our state have a response curve that looks like this. It just depends on where it's shifted on how much salt or our plants can actually tolerate. Okay, this is a couple of soils one from from the NRCS. This is a what a naturally looking sodic soil would look like that has what's called these biscuit tops at the at the be horizon. We won't get get into that very, very fun to find very hard to manage. Okay, if you in fact you own some of these, you know the difficulties of that. One on the right. That's actually my hand, and that's, but, but Sam has taken the picture. Oftentimes you'll see these and it'll be very sparse vegetation on the top of them a button cactus would be a common thing. Very low productivity so these are what look like naturally in our soils. Okay, this was produced by Joe Brennan with the NRCS. Just to give you a scale of what we're talking about. This is the darker the color, the more common these saline soils are. Okay, just look at the state. There's a lot county and in Montana, you got a little bit up in McKinsey County but look in the eastern side of North Dakota, up there over the right you have some really dark areas. These are very highly saline soils are very common actually in the West. If you if you look at the, there's about 7 million acres of saline soils in North Dakota, just put it in perspective. So the soils, not quite as much, but still very commonly dominated in some of the similar landscapes equal county in Montana as example, highly lot of sodic soils in that there's a there's a soil actually called equal and it's a sodic soil. Okay, keep that in perspective. When we come back and we start looking at at Brian spills, as an example, there's not as many acres, but they can be more impactful to those acres. And so, so this was put together by Megan Ostrand. And what they were looking at is like, there's over 10,000 Brian samples that were that were sampled. And there was have an average electrical conductivity of over 300. Does anybody remember what the electrical conductivity of seawater is 58 good answer 58 Thank you in the front. So 58. This means that it is about five to six times Brian is about five to six times more saline than than water in the Caribbean. I'll speak later. She's from Puerto Rico. She doesn't have to worry about 300 salinity in Puerto Rico, but there's so much sodium in it though 190 to 200. That's a lot. So our sodic soils are like five, six, 1015 that that's natural conditions, but imposed imposed Brian on the soil can cause a very large shift in that. Okay, this is what maybe a Brian contaminated soil will look like I don't know if you've ever watched Saturday Live with Miss Rafferty. I did the aliens and it's like, oh, it's a little different for me. And so this is a good example of what you might see in a legacy spill about how difficult these things are to clean up over time. This has probably been there for 2030 40 years. And so the not much advancement in that I will be happy to say when, when Beverly and I were at driving around last summer, they were whoever they are was actually in the process of doing some reclamation at this site. And so that was a that's a good news about this, but they can be highly impactful. Okay, we're going to shift a little bit. And that's those of you that have been in my class. Anyway, so one of the things that I wanted to show you was, we're going to start with the orange one. That was the one that had high electrical conductivity with a high amount of sodium. Look at all that water came out of there. Wait, oh wait, it's all in there yet. Okay, hold on. What about the calcium acetate. Okay, we're starting to see some movement. Why do you think we starting to see some movement with the calcium acetate. Not chance. Why do you think we're seeing movement with the calcium acetate. Well, what's the one thing I talked about we had to have which comes from calcium, exactly. So we added calcium, we're starting to see some flocculation water will start to move through that system. Go back to where we didn't add any calcium. Nothing. Okay, let's look at the gypsum. Okay, I'm going to start to get some water movement gypsum is calcium sulfate. Why are we starting to see movement with with the gypsum. What answer calcium, right. Okay, let's look at the. This was a high concentration of calcium chloride icon amount of calcium. Now we have more water. Why. Calcium. This is the naturally sodic soil. I didn't just get that from the phone. Okay, what do you think some of that brown stuff is organic matter sodium is a natural dispersant. If in fact water is going to move through a soil that has a high amount of organic matter, it will disperse that organic matter and cause it to leach through. And then lastly, get the bucket here. Sodium chloride wash through, not clear. What's why is it not clear. What, what is that what is that color likely to your organic carbon that's in the soil that's moving through. Okay. We'll save that for later. Okay, so we're going to let that drain all the way down and then we're going to add water to it. Why. We're saturating this soil with sodium, and then we're going to add clean water, and we're going to show you that it pretty much stops moving to that water over time. It's because of that sodium is a dispersant, and we're not adding any calcium back into that one. So let's go back to the back to miss rafferty. Okay, so dispersion and swelling. This is a concept that we that we talk about all the time, especially when we're thinking about managing soils that are negatively affected by sodium. So particles are repelled away from each other and the particles act independently. So basically, all these particles that are in the soil, especially the clay fraction is net has a net negative charge, these are negatively charged particles. And you have sodium in the system. There's no way to hold those, those negatives together, and they then they, they repel each other when they repel each other, they act independently. When they act independently, they move around and they that that's called dispersion. Okay, again calcium is a flocculant. The three main problems caused by sodium induced dispersion are reduced infiltration, right reduced infiltration. Reduced hydraulic conductivity. That hasn't moved anywhere. Right, reduced hydraulic conductivity and surface crusting which we won't notice here today. Those are the three main ones that are caused by sodium induced dispersion. Okay, so just to keep sort of in this vein of sodium versus calcium. That is an is a cat eye and that likes to be have a lot of friends, and it's friends or water. So it likes to be hydrated calcium on the other hand is like more touchy feeling it likes to be coordinated it likes to be connected to something. Okay, and so the reason that calcium is a flocculant is because it likes to connect to things. And that's why it holds the negative clay particles together. Let's look at this in another way. When calcium is present, it does not matter if the electrical conductivity is higher not it's holding on. Okay, very. I'm touchy feeling sodium on the other hand is because it likes to be hydrated. It can't hold those two negative those negative charges together, and therefore they get further and further apart more water more sodium comes in they get further and further apart. The soil becomes swollen after Thanksgiving. And then the other one is that when they get too far to get to be dispersed. And so that's when you get major major problems. And that's what we're starting to see sort of over here. Okay, and we're really going to show it once this once this concentrated sodium chloride moves through we're really going to start seeing what that looks like when we add fresh water. Okay, this is just is on your sheet as well you can kind of think about it flocculation flocculation. That's good water moves through swelling. Particles tend to get a little bit fatter. When they get fatter they kind of close the pores when they close the pores the water doesn't move through the last one is dispersion you lose all basically soil structure. It's hard to overcome swelling you can come back from dispersion you cannot. Here's a good example of what what swelling looks like. So this was a naturally sodic soil that's one of my students was working on on the y axis is like how much water, the soil can hold, like the maximum amount of water that a soil can hold, and on the bottom is the electrical conductivity. What do you know about that. What do you know about that graph, keep in mind, you have a reference line which means that there's nothing wrong with that soil but this is how much water it can hold. What happens when you decrease the electrical conductivity. What happens to that feel capacity water. That's the swelling part. There's nothing really wrong with the soil per se. It's just that it has the ability to hold on to more water. And when it holds on to more water. That's where the traffic ability becomes the issue. That's when you don't feel like there's any bottom when you're driving through it or you're walking on it. I've seen more large pieces of agricultural equipment gets stuck in sodic soils than I ever have ice fishing with snow. It's just driving on the lakes. It's just one of those things where you look like it's going to be solid but it's not. Okay, so two main reasons why what I'm going to show you occurs is the sodium concentrations are elevated and the salinity is low so what the one on on your left is a sodic soil and the one on the right is not to see if this works. So these are little cubes of soil that we've dropped into water. Notice the one on the left what happened. Go again because it's so much fun. This is time lapse over about 10 minutes. Don't think this is a days and days. This is 10 minutes. You can have highly dispersive soils that will that will disperse very very quickly. And so, but on the one on the right is the soil that is not dispersive doesn't have a problem with sodium. This is fine. Okay, and so that gives you some sort of view of what we're looking at in here. Here we have probably a very dispersive soil to begin with. It's not moving calcium acetate we're starting to starting to get water to move through. Same with calcium sulfate. The calcium chloride at the end of the day this one's going to win this one will win the water will move through the, the most. It will stop eventually. This is a naturally sodic soil it will end up stopping. And so this is our sodium chloride. So I'm going to throw this. There. Put that back. The rainmaker back on. Now start adding water again. So conceptually what am I doing when I add this water is fresh water. Now there's sodium on the soils exchange sites. What am I doing with the electrical conductivity when I add this water. Is it going up staying the same or going down. Going down, I'm washing the salts or that ions out of the soil. That's what's going to end up causing the soil to swell up and and disperse. Here's a good example. When you send your buddies these kinds of pictures they don't you know they want to know what they're what you're sending, but the, the one on the left is a is a very dispersive soil that I put in in water. Okay, what happened to it. It dispersed very was the other one though, same soil, but I put it in a solution of gypsum. What happened to it. Nothing. Why, we added calcium, and we added a little bit of electrical conductivity, the gypsum when it's when it's in solution has electrical conductivity of about 2.2. And that keeps the soil from dispersing. And so that's why gypsum is is used quite globally. So swelling dispersion can be occur when the percent sodium. And this is a metric that we worked with advice to, to refine, or the sodium absorption ratio is greater than five when the electrical conductivity is less than one. Okay, that's a very tight narrow window, but it's something that we that we've been using in our recommendations. So, you need to add a source of calcium and need to maintain the electrical conductivity above a minimum threshold. Okay, where do we get this calcium. Well, flue gas desulfurization gypsum going to leave an old station. They have piles of it. Okay, what they're doing is that and when the Clean Air Act came. The coal plants had described the sulfur out of the stack. Well, in many parts of the United States, they converted that that sulfur into gypsum. Oftentimes another place parts of the country you'll have a wall board, a gypsum wall board plant right next to a coal plant. Why they're using that gypsum then to make the wall board. Okay, we don't do that here, but but but but that that is fairly common. The cost of gypsum locally produced, put that stamp on it, you can sell it at the farmer's market locally produced low cost $5 to $15 a ton. It's pretty inexpensive for a byproduct to it's going to cost you more and probably moving it than it is to buy it. And it's 23% calcium. The solubility is not that great. And so it's about the mass of one penny, one us penny in about a quarter of a gallon of water. Okay, one penny and a quarter gallon of water, which isn't very much. And the things that honorly who spoke here last year she was looking at was using calcium acetate calcium acetate is is can be mixed can be created by mixing event, basically vinegar with with lime or calcium carbonate. You can watch YouTube videos all day long on this. Why I don't know but anyway you can. And so, one of the things is that the prayers about it it has about the same calcium concentration as gypsum to 25%. But now the solubility is such that you can add almost 600 pennies worth into a gallon of water and it will dissolve. Think about that one penny. In a quarter gallon, or 300 and 570 and a full gallon. Okay, just do the math real quick. It makes more sense than to think about using calcium acetate especially in in the sales with low soil water content. It's kind of expensive though, you know $10 a kilogram or $1000 per ton slide different than five or 15 right and so, but that being said, and it's not locally produced but it certainly could be we have plenty of opportunities for that in this part of the state. Okay, so when we think about remediation of these soils whether it's Brian or whether it's sodic soils. It's good to think about how soluble things are in water. And so, if we just looked at calcium carbonate, which is lime, or 20% of our soils in our state are calcareous, meaning we have excess amount of lime in our soils. If you have a saturated solution of that it's only 0.2. If you have a saturated solution of gypsum it's 2.2. So if they both cost the same. Which one do you think you would rather be able to would you want to apply to your soils that lime or the, or the gypsum lime or the gypsum apply the one that's the most soluble right by the one that's the most soluble. Calcium sulfate is that compared to to a two line. Now, put that in the perspective calcium chloride, which we would likely not use in a in a brine spill is close to 120. Okay, that'd be a wonderful one, because it's so soluble, but the one I had more chloride to the problem calcium acetate is about 28. So, if in fact gypsum was the same cost as calcium acetate, which one would you rather apply calcium acetate, because it's more soluble, you need less water in the soil to make it go into solution. And that's a good thing. And just to give you an example of the seawater and the brine there. Okay, conceptually perfect world Oh this is the academic method of doing it installed drain tile, you add calcium amendments to the top. The one on my on your left shows that you got a lot of sodium, you didn't add any calcium amendments that water is not going to move just like this. You're right. However, if you added with calcium amendments, it's going to move. So conceptually, if you would have something underneath here. Oh, this is drain tile, then you could collect the leachate and take that to offsite transport. Okay, so conceptually that's how, how it would work. And so, oh, look at that. It's an organic matter that's being dispersed from that soil. Not necessarily what you want to see, but it does stain stain things pretty well. Go back to the gypsum. It's a water movement. This is the calcium chloride. A lot more water movement. This one is starting to stop starting to stop or proceeding to stop. This is the one that was the, the yellow or was the naturally occurring a sodic soil. Okay, so then on Lee, what she was doing was trying to figure out, can we use calcium acetate in replacement of gypsum or should we just keep using gypsum. And so what I want to show you today is is the graph that she got from her from her research that which is today's demo soil that's, that's these first four right here. And that's the, that's the what she used for her research. And so, if we're going to look at the top one, just to make things simple on the bottom we have the rate of amendment, the big arrow. That's the same rate of amendment we have today. That's the same rates and that's is the 10 tons per acre. Each of the bars that you see is pelletized gypsum, bluegrass gypsum or calcium acetate. And so what you notice on her research was that with this soil, the gypsum and the calcium acetate there wasn't much difference in the actual movement of water through those through that soil. So what do you think that is, well they're good sources of calcium, right, the good sources of calcium. And so they were both effective in her in two of our other soils, she saw that the calcium acetate was actually better in those soils than it was, then the gypsum. So what we notice though is that soils are not all created equal and one blanket recommendation doesn't always fit all we have to better understand some of the parameters that we have, but when we added more of the calcium acetate. We added 20 tons per acre. What was the difference in the water movements in the upper right hand corner with the calcium acetate was almost three times better. Again, refining what we know about soils and also about what what kind of rates that we would need to apply. Okay, so we spent a lot of time and sort of in a mental sense. Friday nights, Sunday mornings, you know, workday, thinking about, we have different clay mineralogies meaning that we have a clay, we have soils that have clay in them, and oftentimes we just say oh it's clay. But in fact we actually have different mineralogies of clay. And so what that means though is that we have soils like smectite or Montmorillonite that will expand when they get wet. Anybody ever use a bed night. Why do we use that night. That's water movements, right water movement and basically stops. That's the type of soils often we have in our state. We have a lot of swelling soils, but we also tend to have soils that are non expanding or non swelling. These add water they don't do anything. They don't expand at all. So conceptually do you think applying 10 tons 10 tons of a calcium amendment would work for both of those. One of them were one of them because of the way that it's expanding has a more of ability to disperse and swell, then it does the other one, which doesn't, which doesn't expand or disperse. Okay. And so, when we think about those across this, how they might react. So my student Kathy did this study on the X axis, or excuse me on the y axis we have the disperse clay concentration just know that it's the higher up, the more the dispersion, the more sediment will see. If you look at the bottom in that picture, the one on the left. There's a lot of like, you can't see through it. There's a lot of clay in that in that sample. As you move to the right though and that on that on that picture, you can see through it. That means there's not much clay that's being dispersed in that sample. That follows what we're seeing with with the figure. On the bottom we have electrical conductivity. And again on the y axis we have disperse clay. And we have three different types of clay that are common in our state. We got Montmorillonite or smectite. We have a light, and we have our K overnight that I just showed you. What do you notice about the elite which is a non expanding clay and the K overnight. We don't see as much dispersion in those. No, we don't hardly, we don't see any in the K overnight, you could, you could beat that one all day long and you're not going to, you're not going to have this. You're not going to have water that does not move through it, in a sense. Okay, but we have to understand where these are in our state and that's that's the bigger challenge just to do one sample. And probably $300 or $400 just to get that mineralogy spectrum of understanding that. Fortunately, Dr. Dave Franzen whose office is right next to mine. They were looking at a potassium fertility. And for doing that they wanted to look at the smectite to other clay ratios. So, those of you that are well understand this state. You will notice that you there's different colors. The darker the color, the darker the color means that there's more smectite compared to the other clay mineralogies. When you get to the white, that means there's very little smectite compared to the other clay mineralogies. Okay, so, if I asked you, if you go up to Botno in the white area, do you think we'll have as much, do you think we'll have as much problem with dispersion and swelling, compared to where we might be north of Williston. Remember, the non expandings do not necessarily swell and disperse very well, the expanding ones do. You expect more swelling and dispersion with the soils from Botno than you would from Williston. We would expect less swelling and dispersion from the soils from Botno because we have less smectite in them. And if we if we look at those arrows, we can see this is the quantitative data that arrow shows us that we only have 7% of the clay fraction is smectite. That's not very much. Most of it is non expanding clay. But if we go to the sample from north of Williston, 71% of that sample is smectite or Montmorillonite. That's a lot. That's almost getting to be pure smectite or Montmorillonite. That's what this one's doing. You're seeing the swelling and the dispersion occurring because it's an expanding clay. If we would take a sample that is 100% Illite or Kailanite, that water will move right through. You wouldn't have any issues at all. So from a perspective of reclamation, what does that mean? It has huge ramifications, right? Do we need calcium amendments? Do we need to purchase calcium amendments for soils that are not going to disperse anyway? That's a good question, right? We have to answer that. The likelihood of needing those is less because of the fact that water is going to move through and wash chloride through without any issue. We do not regulate sodium in this state. We have a lot of sodium. There's no problem with that. But the chloride is what's being regulated and therefore washing that chloride out or getting it out of the system is priority one for protecting both surface and groundwater. Okay. A little note on that. So then we get the question, it's like, oh, why doesn't Brian just leech by itself? Well, maybe. So this is a, these are from Endon, which I'll give you the website in a minute. This is from Dickinson from 1991 to last week, Sunday. And then up on the y-axis is inches. This is the total rainfall per year. So 12 inches average, whatever average actually means. That's not very much. Counter that though. Look at the yearly potential evapotranspiration. That's like what the atmosphere demands. What is that number over that same, that average? 50? 55? So what that means is that after every rainfall, water is going back up. Every rainfall, the atmosphere is dry, water is going back up. That's why it's hard to leech with natural water conditions with natural precipitation. You just don't have enough water on the landscape long enough to move things down very far because as soon as the sun comes out, it all goes back up again. And so that's one of our challenges. And if you throw that across the landscape, so what would happen if you had a brine spill that was on a zoll soil? Just as, don't worry about the name. Just look at the landscape position. If you had a one inch rainfall event, how much infiltration do you think you'll get on a slope like that? Not very much. It would if it's over 48 hours. But how many times out here do you have a rainfall that lasts more than 15, 20 minutes? That's not violent, right? You get a lot of that, except in the spring. And so landscape position makes a big difference on how much water you can expect to move through those, through those soils, which in fact, using natural conditions to then move brine down further into the profile where it can be collected with tile drainage or some other methods. Okay, so where do we get all this water? Well, let's take a look. Slow and steady rainfall. Spring rains are phenomenal. They're much more steady melting snow. This is the one of the things I think we really need to spend more time thinking about not only from a reclamation, but also from a restoration standpoint as well. You can't make more water, but you can concentrate it. Where do we see, how many times do you get a snowfall out here where it's all nice and pretty and it's like a postcard? Not that often. A lot of times it's like, you know, one of these. Well, if you can capture that water that's moving, or that snow that's moving sideways and concentrate it, you can concentrate a lot of water. A snow fence will concentrate three, four feet of water, snow, which will then can be used for infiltration later on. And so that's one of the things that, you know, how we get to that point, I don't know. But I do think we need to think about more about using that water that is freely available. Okay. Back to the app. It's downloaded. It's free. Okay, let's go back to here real quick. We have the orange one, no movement, no calcium amendments. You got the calcium acetate. Got the gypsum. You have calcium chloride. This one will keep dripping until it's done. This was the naturally sodic soil. What happened? We started to reduce the electrical conductivity in that and now it's seized up. That's why water will not move through this anymore. Oftentimes, I bet if we left this one here till next year, put it in the corner, nobody disrupted it, kept the evaporation low, it'll it would look like that. This one almost guaranteed we can leave it just like this. Next year we could come back it would look the same. Now, remember how fast that water moves through. Remember how fast that water moves through with just the sodium chloride. We added that fresh water. It's hardly even moving anymore. What happened? What condition did we have on those soils that allowed that water to move through with the sodium chloride. We had a lot of sodium but we had a lot of electrical conductivity counteracting that that negative effect. We washed it. Now we move fresh water through it. We still have a lot of sodium. What happened to the electrical conductivity? Was it the same? Go up or go down? Went down. That's exactly what happens. Fresh water moving through a brine impacted soil will likely induce some sort of behavior like that, unless you add some sort of calcium amendment. Now, that being said, in our soils that are very dominated by non-expanding clay like the chloride, ilite, kaolinite, it may not be that big a deal. But in those areas where the smectite is dominating, you're going to have to add some sort of amendment to those. Okay, so the gypsum requirements, those of you that have already donated, well, it was free. Anyway, there's a little bit of an introduction. You can go through all this kind of stuff. Jim Oster, give a big shout out to Jim Oster. He's a North Dakotan by birth. There's lots of stuff in this. If you want help using it, just call me. Just email me. I'll walk you through it. It's fairly simple once you learn just a few of the first tricks on how it's operated. And it really doesn't matter if you're talking about brine soils or soils in the coal industry that are sodic. And so the app works the same. Okay, then you get a value. At the end of the day, you get a value that is in tons of gypsum per acre that you should apply. Okay, from that you can kind of gauge on what your resources are and what your benefit cost ratio is. Okay, so back to the demo. Water movement restricted in high sodium and low EC soils. Water restricted. I don't know. Non-existent is a better term. Both the calcium acetate and the gypsum. This was the soil where Analy said that the rate of movement with this rate of calcium and from gypsum and acetate is the same. So there's no difference between these two experimentally. Here we might see a little difference but experimentally that there was no difference. The calcium chloride, high calcium, high electrical conductivity, no problem. This sodic, again, Wade can take you to a thousand of these, but this is what the water will do over time. And one I think is the most dramatic is this one, the red one, and also the one over here is because of the fact that we can make a sodic soil very easily. Yeah, I put a lot of stuff in here, but a brine spill does the same thing. We have to be cognizant of that as we think about the mineral, not only the clay content but the mineralogy of those soils as well. Okay. So moving forward, I do think that we can probably do a better job of understanding different water sources. Like we're using water that's, you know, from the tap, pretty pure water. When we get water that's a little different, like from the, from the White Earth River, or from a different source that has more electrical conductivity to it. We might not have to apply as much gypsum if in fact the water is already of poorer quality. Okay, so it might be something to look at as we, as we start to assess movement of water through these soils. Because I suspect the purchase water that you might get at Tioga or other places is probably a little bit more pure. And so you might have to think about how that versus the White Earth River water might react. Okay, I just want to reiterate the fact that mineralogy is going to be a big driver in the movement of this water. The one on the right is the one on the right is the Montmorillonite. That's what we're having right here. That's what we have right here. However, if we have a soil that has more non-expanding like Kaolinite or Illite, I think that water will move through fairly quickly. We don't see much negative impact when the clay mineralogy is non-expanding. So I think that's, we can do a better job in looking at those. Okay, calcium acetate. Where do we find those sources at? Harold and I, Harold Rhodes who's going to be speaking later, we've had conversations about calcium acetate and calcium magnesium acetate as an example. Calcium magnesium acetate is a deicer. In cities and states where chloride is a major water quality concern, they use calcium magnesium acetate. Why? There's no chloride in it. It's effective, but there's no chloride in it. So that's one of the things that we are going to be further looking at. And lastly, I want to point to you our North Dakota Agricultural Weather Network. It's one of the, aside from the WebSol survey, it's one of the greatest resources we have in our state. And so the easiest way to sort of navigate and look just like what's happening right now is go to endon.info. And in there, you can pull up maps of temperature, today's max temperature, 24-hour temperature change, rain since yesterday, winds at three meters, winds at 10 meters. You can see all that real time. It's not an app, but you can just refresh it on your phone's browser. And so the other endon station, however, you can get all that historical data that I showed with the rainfall and the potentially vapour transpiration. We have like 140 stations across North Dakota. The WISE Weather Network, which was funded by the oil and gas industry, they put a lot more stations in the western part of the state. And so it's well covered. But please use that information as much as you can because it's research quality data, but it's also updated every five minutes. Okay. What kind of questions might you have for me and I have no idea what time it is. So, six minutes. Wow. So I usually do this demonstration and I have a 50 minute class. And so I try to get to do the demonstration in that time period. So we overemphasize lots of things just because to fit it in. Water movement and soils takes a long time. The higher the clay content. Oh, it's so slow. More coarse textured water moves through pretty well, meaning more sand. So questions. Yes, Bill. So Bill's question was go back to Botinow County, where were the where the smectite other clay ratio shifted more towards the other clay than the smectite. And the question was, do we need to add a bunch of amendments to those to get them to improve. My feeling is based on what, and we'd have to do a little bit more. But if you have an area with a lot of non expanding clay. Washing with water might be as beneficial as adding a bunch of calcium, at least on the front end. And so now the water getting the water and collecting the water is always the issue. Right. Yeah, and so yeah there's back in the day and Bill and most of you can explain it better than I can there was evaporation pits where they put the brine in, and they just expand over time. But what getting water to move down or out would be highly beneficial. I don't think they might expand and swell and disperse as much as something in Williams County. Our soils in the Red River Valley, you know we imperial cast county over there but that we got, we got the very very highly expansive clay soils, and getting water to move through them is very challenging. And they're have a lot of smectite in them so questions. Yes, sir. Scott's question is, if we have soils that that we have an ability to collect get water that is sort of like a poor quality water. Can that be used as opposed to using a fresh water flush or something like that is that is that correct. Yep, I would say, if that if that water has elevated electrical conductivity. And even if it does have sodium and chlora and in calcium and magnesium in it. I would say that that would be a better first flush than using fresh fresh water like rainfall water is fresh right, but using maybe a poor quality, just as we showed here. Just as we showed there, we might have to add that calcium source later, but at least with the initial flush you might not need it. So identifying those sources of water and whether you can actually access them and get them is probably another challenge but, but I do think there's some benefit in thinking about that from that standpoint. But yes, and the verge. Almost, but I have one question for you on on your application your app. It, I noticed all the fields have to be filled in. So what if you don't have that information. Just, there's a lot of fields in that in that in that app. One of them is the starting sodium where you're starting at and whether is where you're ending. So that takes care of two of them. Both density we just talked about that it's very difficult to get. Oftentimes we just say it's 1.5 just because that's about what it is normally in the soil. So that is the purity of the gypsum. So we have to know if we're using gypsum that is 100% pure, or 90% pure, and that purity of our flue gas gypsum is somewhere in that 90 to 93% pure pure so it's really high quality stuff. And another one is like the, what the cation exchange capacity of the soil is. That's the one that's more difficult to get out. But we can estimate that from the clay content, most in a, and if we're off 510 15%, it's still a better number than guessing what it might be at the beginning of the day but it's a valid question. Therefore, if you have questions I'm certainly happy to walk through that with you.