e-newsletter - fall 2007
Protecting a Local Treasure: Best Management Practices on a Watershed Scale:
Analysis of Best Management Practices in the Spring Creek Watershed
A multi-institution, interdisciplinary project of the Cooperative Wetlands Center (CWC) designed to gage the effectiveness of “best management practices” (BMPs) builds on nearly 20 years of water quality and riparian monitoring in the Spring Creek watershed in Centre County, Pennsylvania. The investigative team also includes researchers from the Canaan Valley Institute (CVI), Cornell University, and the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC).
Previous research by Dr. Robert Carline, recently retired adjunct professor of fisheries, is being used as the foundation for this new project. Since 1988 Carline has studied the spawning ecology of brown trout in the Spring Creek watershed, consequences of sedimentation, and effects of streambank fencing in pastures on water quality. Streambank fencing is just one of many possible BMPs – measures taken to improve water quality and riparian habitat.
Carline’s early research showed that the middle section of the watershed, which is downstream of Slab Cabin Run and is heavily influenced by urban and agricultural drainage from the State College area, had fewer trout spawning beds than other sections of the watershed. He determined that sediment from streambank erosion and urban runoff was causing a decline in trout reproduction.
To reduce sediment loads, streambank fencing and mainly grass buffer strips were installed
in various places within the watershed. These BMPs proved effective in lowering sediment levels
in the stream by 50%.
Assessing the performance of BMPs in agricultural watersheds is difficult due to the variety of landscape characteristics and land uses, the use of various conservation practices, and the scale of the watershed. The new, larger study directed by Robert Brooks, director of the CWC, is using Carline’s data as a basis to ask questions such as (i) whether it’s possible to judge the effectiveness of different kinds of BMPs within the watershed, (ii) how collective BMPs influence overall watershed water quality, and (iii) where to place certain kinds of BMPs to maximize their effectiveness.
“Although the impacts to the environment from agriculture can be substantial,” says Brooks, “we can not live without agriculture. So we need to determine how we can most efficiently reduce agricultural impacts on water resources while meeting the objectives of farmers and other landowners. The benefits accrue to all people in the watershed and to all people downstream of the watershed,” including Chesapeake Bay.
In addition to Brooks and Carline, the study team includes the following principal investigators:
- George Constantz from CVI, whose team will coordinate public outreach within the watershed and also obtain very high resolution (~1-m resolution vs. the standard 30-m resolution) remotely sensed data for the watershed. The hope is that this fine resolution will allow researchers to distinguish between landscape features such as crop types and pasture grazing intensities, so they can determine how these factors influence water quality.
- Donald Weller and Kathy Boomer from SERC, who will coordinate efforts to manipulate the high resolution remotely sensed landscape data to determine whether having this higher quality data produces more accurate models of, for example, sediment output from fields, etc.
- Richard Stedman from Cornell University and Jim Shortle from Penn State’s Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology, whose team will interview and survey riparian landowners throughout the watershed to gain greater understanding of people’s motivations for deciding whether to participate in BMP cost-share programs.
The project is funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Conservation Effects Assessment Program (CEAP).
by Joy Drohan