The United States Department of Agriculture has opted to relocate the Soil and Water Research Unit on the south end of campus after two decades of cooperative work with the LSU Agricultural Center.The unit officially closed Oct. 11, and the space will be returned to the University in November. Equipment and personnel were officially relocated earlier this month to the Sugar Cane Research Unit in Houma. The Soil and Water Research Unit building was leased from the University by the USDA to contribute to studying fertilizer runoff from farmland and how it affects Louisiana waterways.The work done by both University faculty and graduate students at the unit contributed to studies of the “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico, a low-oxygen area created, in part, by agricultural runoff from the Mississippi River and surrounding watersheds.”We’re losing a valuable research partner for this kind of research,” said John Westra, professor of agricultural economics who worked with the unit. “I suspect we would have been able to continue getting some funding from that lab for future research from that lab if it hadn’t closed.”Westra said the most immediate impact of the closure of the unit will be on economic agriculture students who will need to find other sources of funding for research.The USDA has tried to close the unit since 2006, said Doug Daigle, coordinator for the Louisiana Hypoxia Working Group, which studies the dead zone.Daigle, his group and other supporters — ranging from state congressmen to the hunting group Ducks Unlimited — lobbied to keep the unit open because of its research.The funding and research of the unit will continue in Houma, but Daigle said it constitutes a de facto closure of Baton Rouge research. He said the at least two-hour drive would make it difficult for students to continue research.Dan Thomas, chair of biological and agricultural engineering, agreed agricultural students would receive less hands-on training but said it was not uncommon for such units to combine during economic crunches. Federal budget constraints were the leading cause of the consolidation, Thomas said. He said once a unit falls below a “certain critical mass” of scientists — usually four — the USDA generally recombines a smaller unit with a larger one.Daigle said researchers will now focus on the soil and water economic elements of sugar cane biofuel, the focus of the Houma unit.The unit will continue its partnership with the University in Houma and still maintain several of the sites used to study water and soil.—-Contact Adam Duvernay at [email protected]