Development of the Agricultural Conservation Planning Framework

Dan Conservation, Environment, Industry News Release, USDA-NRCS

NRCS Conservation Outcomes Webinar Series

(USDA/NRCS) —This monthly webinar series highlights recent outcomes, emerging opportunities, and conservation tools and data developed to assist with conservation planning and impact and efficiency assessment. The series illustrates the scope of Farm Bill conservation efforts on privately owned croplands, forests, and rangelands; documents the conservation achievements and outcomes of those efforts; and shows the utility of science-based outcomes for helping inform future conservation delivery.

These one-hour, live webinars will occur every fourth Thursday at 3:00 p.m. Eastern Time (ET) via Adobe Connect at https://nrcs.adobeconnect.com/ceap2/

Conservation Planning
Courtesy USDA/NRCS.

January 28, 3:00 p.m. ET – Development of the Agricultural Conservation Planning Framework (ACPF) and Use by NRCS for Watershed Planning.

Nutrient and sediment losses from agricultural watersheds have impacts on aquatic and marine ecosystems of the U.S. Improving agricultural water quality requires planning and voluntary installation of new conservation practices through producer engagement. Practices must be selected and located to be effective based on a watershed assessment, and appropriate for each landscape and each individual farm operation. To help meet this challenge, ARS scientists in Ames, Iowa, have developed the Agricultural Conservation Planning Framework (ACPF) to provide watershed databases and software tools that can be used to present realistic options for placement of conservation practices that can improve water quality outcomes. High resolution data on land cover, soil survey, and topography are analyzed to identify a suite of conservation practice options to reduce impacts of runoff and subsurface tile drainage on water quality. The ACPF provides watershed databases for more than 11,500 small watersheds that cover most of the U.S. Corn Belt. This webinar, presented by ARS scientists Mark D. Tomer and David E. James and moderated by CEAP-Watersheds Assessment Component Leader Lisa Duriancik, will describe the ACPF and a current NRCS project aimed to facilitate evaluation of ACPF results for selected NWQI and CEAP watersheds in 15 states.

Access the webinar at https://nrcs.adobeconnect.com/ceap2/ a few minutes before the webinar starts.

Closed captioning is available. Add to my calendar.

Each webinar will be recorded and archived for later viewing on this website and the NRCS Conservation Webinar Portal.

Source: USDA/National Resources Conservation Seervice