Title: | Techniques for assessing the environmental outcomes of conservation practices applied to rangeland watersheds |
Authors: | Weltz, M.A., L. Jolley, D. Goodrich, K. Boykin, M. Nearing, J. Stone, P. Guertin, M. Hernandez, K. Spaeth, F. Pierson, C. Morris and B. Kepner |
Year: | 2011 |
Journal: | Journal of Soil and Water Conservation |
Volume (Issue): | 66(5) |
Pages: | 154A-162A |
Article ID: | |
DOI: | 10.2489/jswc.66.5.154A |
URL (non-DOI journals): | |
Model: | SWAT |
Broad Application Category: | hydrologic and pollutant |
Primary Application Category: | land use change assessment |
Secondary Application Category: | Conservation Effects Assessment Project (CEAP) based study |
Watershed Description: | 2,237 km^2 Rock Creek, located in northern Nevada, U.S. |
Calibration Summary: | |
Validation Summary: | |
General Comments: | An abstract was not really reported for this study; the material in the abstract slot is the first two paragraphs of the paper. The paper discusses the use of the USDA AGWA GIS interface and models that can be applied with it for rangeland analyses including SWAT. An example of applying SWAT for the Nevada watershed listed here is included in the paper. |
Abstract: | Grazing lands are the most dominant
land cover type in the United
States, with approximately 311.7
Mha being defined as rangelands (Mitchell
2000). Approximately 53% (166.2 Mha)
of the nation’s rangelands (USDA 2009)
are owned and managed by the private
sector, while approximately 43% are managed
by the federal government (USDA
NRCS 2011a). The remaining rangelands
are owned and managed by tribal, state,
and local governments. Information on
the type, extent, and spatial location of
land degradation on rangelands is needed
to inform policy and management decisions
on rangelands; however, there is no
systematic or coordinated national dataset
on status or condition of rangelands
for the United States to make informed
policy decisions (NRC 1994; Herrick
et al. 2010). Rangelands in the west are
sparsely populated, and assessments of
rangeland conditions have historically
not been uniformly conducted across
all land ownership classes in any systematic
monitoring program. Therefore, it
is difficult to assess the current health of
rangelands and which areas could benefit
from targeted conservation as USDA
Natural Resources Conservation Service
(NRCS) has recently done for cropland
within the Upper Mississippi River Basin
(USDA NRCS 2010) and the Chesapeake
Bay (USDA NRCS 2011b) through
the Conservation Effects Assessment
Project (CEAP).
CEAP is a USDA initiative that is
focused on quantifying environmental
impacts of conservation on agricultural
lands. The CEAP component aimed at
assessing conservation on grazing lands
was initiated in 2006 (Weltz et al. 2008).
The challenges associated with assessments
and monitoring on grazing lands and specifically
rangelands are extreme due to
the large spatial extent of the resource,
mixed land ownership, high variability of
biological attributes due to extremes in
annual precipitation in arid and semiarid
rangelands, no uniform sampling protocol,
and no central agency assigned for conducting
the assessment. The assessment of
rangelands is further complicated by the
difficulty in defining a baseline condition
(reference condition) to document what
changes have occurred. Additional challenges
include developing cost-effective
means of integrating quantitative data
into an assessment protocol, high cost
associated with collecting and processing
national datasets, minimal analytical tools
to interpret the results, and no dedicated
team to develop and write the assessment. |
Language: | English |
Keywords: | |