Community decision makers need simple tools to account for the many factors involved with watershed protection. Inventorying natural resources, assessing the health of those resources, modeling existing and future pollution loads, and visualizing future landscapes help piece together the watershed picture. This research often incorporates geospatial technologies, like geographic information systems (GIS), global positioning systems (GPS), and remote sensing. The New England Water Program applies cutting-edge research techniques and tools to help communities use this technology to protect our water resources and rural watersheds.
The CT NEMO (Nonpoint Education for Municipal
Officials) 
has developed many tools. They helped develop the Impervious
Surface Analysis Tool (ISAT) which calculates
the
percentage of impervious surface area of specific areas (e.g., watersheds, municipalities,
subdivisions) and incorporates land cover change scenarios
to examine how changes influence impervious surfaces.
ISAT is helping communities minimize impervious surface
therefore protecting
watershed health and water quality. They also helped develop Connecticut's Changing Landscape Project (CCL) which utilizes remote sensing techniques to document the expansion of developed land from 1985 to 2002. This web-based tool provides a solid foundation for tracking landscape change over time and offers objective research-based information to inform debates on sprawl and smart growth.
The URI NEMO program
developed the MANAGE
(Method for Assessment, Nutrient-loading, and Geographic
Evaluation of watersheds) model .
By applying a simplified hydrologic / nutrient
loading model to specific
soils and land use types in study areas. URI
NEMO program provides community-customized
outreach programs to help rural communities and land
trusts identify and evaluate pollution risks related
to land use and onsite wastewater disposal. Based on
such assessments, several RI communities adopted town wastewater management ordinances
requiring septic system inspection, repair and upgrading
to protect local groundwater supplies and coastal waters.
For example, in one town, all cesspools
will be replaced with 6,000 onsite wastewater treatment
systems.
The Laboratory
for Earth Resources Information Systems (LERIS) ,
a NASA-funded Regional Earth Science Applications Center
at UConn, brings remote sensing technology to decision
makers concerned about the impacts of land use change
on their communitiy's water resources. Research focuses on improved land cover mapping and change detection,
impervious surface estimation and mapping, forest fragmentation
characterization, and urban growth modeling.
UMass researchers
are developing a watershed-scale
model for
the entire Connecticut River that identifies sensitive watershed areas in the basin
and evaluates the effects of
watershed land use practices and policies on
water quality and ecological integrity.
URI NEMO and UConn Geospatial Technology Programs adapted a Connecticut NEMO resource to a research-based web tool on remote sensing land cover change in RI. With this data, local land land use decision makers have up-to-date information
they need to effectively manage
their watersheds.
A UVM research project is
developing an interactive spatially
dynamic framework for sustainable watershed phosphorus
(P) management 
.
It will
evaluate long-term spatial and temporal dynamics
of alternative management scenarios for watershed P
management.
Exchange of Watershed Management Tools
The University of Connecticut houses the National
NEMO Network ,
a CSREES National Facilitation Project. This project
provides coordination, training, and communication
services to new and existing NEMO projects that are
led by Land Grant Universities. Through these national
efforts, new watershed management tools are being
utilized in local communities.
The URI Watershed Hydrology Lab, UConn and ASU are collaborating on a new project that will gain more insight into sources and sinks of nitrate 
and translate these results into a model to be tested extensively and distributed via the National NEMO Network.
Indicates
work supported by the
USDA-CSREES National Research
Initiative Competitive Grants Program .