Watershed Achievements Report

Recommendations

Info

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
Statewide Watershed Achievements Report 2015 • The third goal of this project of building a network of individuals trained in the use of NTT is in process. The NTT tool has been shared with many natural resource professionals and has been received very well by those professionals for its functionality. The ease of use of the tool is being addressed in the core curriculum and training and is not completed at this time. However, the outputs of the program have been shared with these professionals and the ability of the tool to show the decreases or increases in nitrogen, phosphorus, and sediment has been well received. The team has created a heightened awareness of the NTT tool and this is reflected in the Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) wanting to work with Minnesota in getting the tool calibrated. The team can see its use in farm planning, water quality conservation, and ecosystem services occurring. Lessons learned A valuable lesson learned in this project was to have a tool that was calibrated and ready for use within the project. This project objective experienced substantial delays and challenges surrounding NTT development complications occurring at the national level. Even though the model was originally promised to be calibrated and in service over a year ago, the NRCS and its contractors have run into budget delays that resulted in this complicating issues. One example causing NTT work delays has been the national level management and decision making process regarding the targeted audience and release of a full working version of the tool. Recently NRCS has concluded it will work only with the USDA Agricultural Research Services (ARS) and take back full control of NTT setup, calibration and documentation. The team is very excited that the tool will soon become calibrated in Minnesota but will await the day that will happen. We find value in this tool and really want to see this tool come to fruition. We would like to continue this project once there is a calibrated version. Financial information Funding type: Section 319 Grant amount: $62,496 Final in-kind: $98,417 Contact information Shannon Fisher, Executive Director Minnesota River Board 135 Trafton Science Center South Minnesota State University Mankato, MN 56001 507-389-5492 shannon.fisher@mnsu.edu MPCA Project Manager: Nick Gervino Farm field in southeastern Minnesota used to test reductions Minnesota Pollution Control Agency www.pca.state.mn.us 33
Page 1 and 2: Watershed Achievements Report 2015
Page 3 and 4: a Success Story . . . Lake Shaokata
Page 5 and 6: Cedar River Watershed and Shell Roc
Page 7 and 8: Introduction Watershed Achievements
Page 9 and 10: Section 319 Section 319 Grant progr
Page 17 and 18: eLINK Watershed Achievements Report
Page 19 and 20: eLINK Watershed Achievements Report
Page 27 and 28: Statewide Watershed Achievements Re
Page 31: Statewide Watershed Achievements Re
Page 47 and 48: Cedar River Basin Watershed Achieve
Page 49 and 50: Cedar River Basin Watershed Achieve
Page 51 and 52: Watershed Des Moines Achievements a
Page 53 and 54: Watershed Des Moines Achievements a
Page 55 and 56: Lake Superior Basin Watershed Achie
Page 57 and 58: Lower Mississippi River Basin Water
Page 63 and 64: Watershed Minnesota River Achieveme
Page 83 and 84:
Watershed Minnesota River Achieveme
Page 85 and 86:
Page 87 and 88:
Page 89 and 90:
Page 91 and 92:
Page 93 and 94:
Page 95 and 96:
Minnesota Watershed Red River Basin
Page 97 and 98:
Minnesota Watershed Red River Basin
Page 99 and 100:
Minnesota Watershed Red St. Croix R
Page 101 and 102:
Page 103 and 104:
Page 105 and 106:
Page 107 and 108:
Upper Minnesota Watershed Red St. C
Page 109 and 110:
Page 111 and 112:
Page 113 and 114:
Page 115 and 116:
Page 117 and 118:
Page 119 and 120:
show all

Watershed Achievements Report

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?