Watershed Management Assessment and Planning

Watershed Assessment and Planning

By connecting the concepts of land use and water quality, watershed assessment and planning allows decision-makers to identify the sources and factors that affect the delivery of pollutants to our water bodies. USDA CSREES watershed assessment and planning programming educates a wide array of state and local decision makers on water quality and management issues at the watershed scale. Extension programming plays a critical role in making available newly developed watershed assessment methods, GIS analysis and watershed modeling tools, as well as watershed assessment and planning information.

Extension activities pertaining to "Watershed Assessment and Planning" can be broken into the following categories (linked further down this page):
Community Oriented Programs for Community Decision Makers
Portals to Watershed Information and Models

Community Oriented Programs for Community Decision Makers
Using a variety of programming including workshops, hands-on training, websites and media publications, Extension programs educate agricultural producers, residents, and community decision makers on water quality and watershed management issues. Programs such as NEMO (Nonpoint Education for Municipal Officials) use GIS and other tools to educate local land use decision makers about the relationship between land use and natural resource protection.

National NEMO logo NEMO National Facilitation Project
The National NEMO Network is a network of educational programs helping communities better protect natural resources while accommodating growth. The programs within the network are non-regulatory, research-based outreach efforts that emphasize natural resource-based land use planning and better site design.
Accomplishments:
Catalyzed by NEMO educational programs and information, towns throughout the nation have changed their land use plans, regulations, policies and procedures which will protect and improve water quality. Watershed plans have led to unprecedented inter-town cooperation. Individual program accomplishments can be found on the website.

In 2001-2004, $200,000 was made available to coastal NEMO programs to enhance their educational efforts as a result of the Coastal NEMO Enhancement Grant Program—a collaboration between NOAA and the National NEMO Network. Six out of fifteen NEMO proposals were funded, resulting in further collaboration between NEMO, NOAA, and various partner organizations, and a strengthening of the National Network.

ISAT training The National NEMO Network has collaborated with the EPA’s “Smart Growth” Office (The Office of Policy, Economics and Innovation, Division of Development, Community and the Environment). Fourteen NEMO programs in 13 states have been trained in educating local leaders about open space planning. Educational programs are being developed to help communities plan for open space conservation. Targeted regions include Knox County, Tennessee; Nissequogue River Watershed; Long Island, New York; Scott County, Minnesota and the Town of Northport, Maine.

In collaboration with UConn’s Geospatial Technology Program , and the NOAA Coastal Services Center , the National NEMO Network has developed the Impervious Surface Analysis Tool (ISAT) , which helps communities estimate levels of impervious surface cover—an important indicator of water quality degradation. Workshops have been held to train Network members in the use of ISAT, and information is being gathered to create a unified, nationally derived set of coefficients for the program.

Other Community Oriented Programs
Even outside the National NEMO Network, other Extension programs work with local governments to ensure that land use planning incorporates element of water resource protection.
Accomplishments:
The Planning with POWER , coordinated by the Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant College Program and Purdue University Cooperative Extension, is a statewide educational program that links land use planning with watershed planning at the local level. As a result of the program, a Smart Growth Initiative was launched in two counties in Feb. 2004. Over 45 participants attended the first event of the initiative, representing 11 different municipalities, two counties, three universities, a regional planning agency and several special interest groups.

Cornell University LEAPE training local officials Locally-led Education and Action for Protecting the Environment (LEAPE) is an educational program developed at Cornell University intended for local governments interested in protecting water resources in their communities. The core of the LEAPE program is custom software that offers a number of management options to assist local officials in developing effective policies for protecting water resources while meeting other management goals. Program participants from four pilot towns indicated that the approach was successful in catching their attention and got them thinking on the watershed scale.

Ohio State University (OSU) Watershed Action Plan including members of the OSU Extension Watershed Team designed and facilitated a series of planning meetings in the lower Alum Creek Watershed. The team reviewed the elements of the structured decision-making approach, provided example outcomes from the Alum Creek planning process, and concluded that this approach allowed participants to develop alternatives, based on their values, which addressed multiple objectives and resulted in a more complex understanding of water resources problems through new lines of inquiry.

GIS Education/Training Programs
GIS is a powerful tool in watershed assessment and planning that allows decision makers to obtain accurate geographic information about water resources and possible sources of pollution, as well as predict impacts of development and other human activities on water resources. USDA CSREES GIS training programs show local decision makers how to use this valuable tool in their decision-making processes.
North Dakota State University GIS training Examples:
The University of New Hampshire’s (UNH) Geospatial Technologies Training Center offers training and assistance in GIS and GPS technologies. The Training Center is a joint effort of UNH Cooperative Extension, the NH GRANIT Project , and several partners.

The Center for Advanced Spatial Technologies (CAST) was established at the University of Arkansas to bring together the considerable expertise of a network of researchers with a long-standing history of GIS development at the University. The University of Arkansas Cooperative Extension Service incorporates GIS and GPS into several existing programs while developing new programs to transfer this technology to their clientele.

At North Dakota State University, a geospatial education program has been developed to advance knowledge of GIS tools, geographic databases, and global positioning equipment (Seelig 2003). Program participants design and implement local projects utilizing geospatial concepts.

Portals to Watershed Information and Models
The availability and accessibility of information is essential to watershed assessment and planning. Extension program websites often provide a central location where local decision makers can find links to various categories of watershed information, such as agricultural best management practices (BMPs) and Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) reports, as well as information about model selection, data requirements, constraints, and example models.
Examples:
WATERSHEDSS (Water, Soil and Hydro-Environmental Decision Support System) , a program developed at North Carolina State University, helps watershed managers and land treatment personnel identify their water quality problems and select appropriate best management practices. The program has three components: 1) the watershed assessment and evaluation, which includes a pollutant budget spreadsheet and an agricultural BMP database 2) an educational component containing information and references on non-point source pollutants and sources, and 3) an annotated bibliography of non-point source literature.

The Watershed Projects Inventory (WPI) and the California Watershed Projects Inventory are part of the comprehensive Natural Resource Projects Inventory . The WPI chronicles past, current and future resource-based restoration, mitigation and conservation projects in or bordering California.

The University of Arizona Cooperative Extension’s Watershed Information page allows users to click on their watershed to access links to a wealth of watershed information. Topics include: National forests and recreation areas, EPA’s TMDL reports, water resource legislation, specific watershed organizations, tribal nations and the State Department of Water Resources.

Research within the University of Rhode Island (URI) NEMO program developed the MANAGE (Method for Assessment, Nutrient-loading, and Geographic Evaluation of watersheds) model. This method applies a simplified hydrologic / nutrient loading model that adapts to specific soils and land use types in each study area. The URI NEMO program uses this model combined with community-customized outreach programs to help rural communities and land trusts identify and evaluate pollution risks related to land use and onsite wastewater disposal.
Accomplishment:
Based on watershed pollution assessments conducted with the URI NEMO program, several communities have adopted town wastewater management ordinances requiring septic system inspection, repair and upgrading to protect local groundwater supplies and coastal waters.

The intent of this page is not to catalogue all activities but rather to indicate the types of Extension activities in the Watershed Management theme across the U.S.