Watershed Achievements Report

Statewide Watershed Achievements Report 2015
Minnesota Pollution Reduction and
Economics Test with Nutrient Tracking
Tool
This project will professionally validate and demonstrate
the Nutrient Tracking Tool (NTT) to evaluate land
management scenarios and provide measureable
outcomes for conservation practices designed to reduce
non-point source pollution. The NTT, being developed
by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA)
and Texas Institute for Applied Environment Research,
compares agricultural management scenarios to calculate
a change in nitrogen, phosphorous, sediment loss
potential and crop yield. A farm economic component
will be incorporated to understand the economic bottom
line related to productive land management. The NTT can
be used for farm management planning; market based
programs, as well as calculating measurable outcomes
for conservation practices. In addition, the NTT estimates
nitrogen delivered in the shallow aquifer at field edge.
Project partners (Minnesota River Board, American
Farmland Trust, Kieser & Associates, Rural Advantage,
South Central College and Stearns County Soil and Water
Conservation District [SWCD]) view the NTT as a valuable
tool to evaluate and compare agricultural management
systems and justify conservation implementation from
both an economic and environmental standpoint. The
project will test and demonstrate the NTT for future
use in conservation practice decision making and
implementation. Natural resource professionals will
be trained to use the NTT. Priority BMP sites will be
selected to evaluate performance of the NTT and costs /
benefits of management scenarios. After validating and
developing the NTT curriculum, the project team will
engage in outreach events and train natural resource
managers.
Goals
• One of our primary goals for this project focused on
the successful and well-timed identification of priority
BMP’s practices and on-the-ground functioning sites.
The priority BMP’s, perennial establishments, buffers,
nutrient management, conservation tillage, and cover
crops, will be the focus of landowner interviews and
a comprehensive assessment of the crop rotation
surrounding the BMP. An economic analysis of these
BMP’s are part of this goal.
• The second goal of this project was the professional
validation of the NTT by peer review, utilizing
technical committees and a State Advisory Committee
(SAC) comprised of state level conservation
professionals. Through this peer review and validation
of the tool, the team will have a goal of running a final
evaluation of the NTT and determine applicability of
this tool for future use in ecosystem management.
• The third goal of this project is to build a network
of individuals trained and tested to use the NTT.
The team hopes to create heightened awareness of
the NTT and its use for farm planning, water quality
conservation and ecosystem services. The team
hopes to see the use of NTT by natural resources
professionals in Minnesota. This will all be supported
by the completion of core curriculum development of
NTT, explaining its use and how to use it.
Results that count
• The goal of identifying well timed BMP’s was achieved
due to many reasons. The BMP’s the team chose
are practices that are currently being utilized on the
landscape and are practices that our partners have
strong connections with. The Stearns County SWCD
has a strong history of working with producers in
terms of nutrient management and Rural Advantage
has a strong history of working with producers in
the area of cover crops. Conservation tillage, buffers
and perennial establishments are all practices that
are currently on the landscape and that producers
are supporting. Integrated with this information
that is gathered from the producers is the economic
information concerning each of these practices. The
inputs that are required for each of these scenarios
are recorded and will be inputted into the NTT tool.
• The second goal of this project has been hampered
by the NTT not being calibrated for Minnesota. It has
also been hampered by the Tool itself, at times, giving
different outputs based on the same initial inputs
on repeated runs. Professional validation by the SAC
was initiated and is mostly in the beginning phases
of validation by the SAC. The applicability of the
tool to Minnesota and its relation to our latitude and
growing seasons was discussed and shared with the
developers. The team believes in the applicability of
the tool for future use in ecosystem management but
the tool needs to be calibrated for Minnesota so that
the natural resource professionals who would use it,
are confident in the outputs the tool is producing.
Minnesota Pollution Control Agency www.pca.state.mn.us 32