By Melissa Wilson, manure management and water quality Extension specialist It was a tough fall for manure application. In many places of the state it was wet and harvest was delayed. On top of that, winter arrived earlier than it has in the past couple of years. Many people were forced to apply manure on top of frozen soils or even snow. We’ve gotten a lot of questions about how the nitrogen in the manure will be impacted. When manure is applied on the surface of frozen soils or on top of snow, we have two concerns. First, it cannot seep into the ground, so if there is any runoff in your fields, it can carry the manure to low spots or away from the field entirely which may cause environmental issues. We have already seen widespread rain in December across southern Minnesota and snow melt in January in many parts of the state. Fields with higher amounts of residue are less likely to have as much runoff as fields with low residue, so this problem may be worse in some fields and