Planning as a Community: Mapping Soil Erosion with the Agricultural Conservation Planning Framework (ACPF)

Geography major at Macalester CollegeThis summer, my partner, Ivy Huwald, and I split our time between sitting in front of a computer running a GIS model known as the Agricultural Conservation Planning Framework (ACPF), and exploring the Red Cedar Watershed, talking to community members and farmers about the health of the water in the watershed. We used the ACPF to identify fields of high risk of runoff and locate possible locations for conservation practices in high risk fields to reduce runoff in Bronken and Hay Creek sub-watersheds. We chose to run this analysis in these small sections of the watershed because they are heavily used for agriculture and because they are a part of a Farmer Led Council that is working on implementing more conservation practices in the area. Our hope is that the results of our research can be a useful tool for them if they are interested. We did this analysis on a small scale to ensure it was accurate and so we were able to really spend time getting to know these areas to ensure our model was reliable. The scale of this research also allowed us to get extremely accurate data and gave us a lot of time to check our results. The purpose of this summer project is to support and help the community with dealing with the phosphorus pollution in the lakes and rivers in the watershed. We thought the ACPF would be a useful tool in this watershed because 45% of the land use in the watershed is agricultural. Agriculture is not the only source of phosphorus pollution, but it is a major contributor because it is so widespread. Fortunately, we know that there are specific conservation practices that can be used to reduce runoff from agriculture. It is a source of phosphorus pollution that is addressable and that can also have a large impact. The ACPF provides a great opportunity for the community and farmers to decide where to devote resources and change practices to have the greatest impact on soil health and water quality. We also sent out 2,000 survey to residents in the watershed to gauge their connection to the watershed to see what kind of support and interest people had in cleaning up the watershed. We were pleased to see that 63% of the people who responded to the survey felt a strong connection to the watershed. This was exciting seeing as the ACPF relies on support and participation from the community and only works if people are interested in its results. The results we got from the ACPF are a series of maps that show where runoff risk is located and where specific conservation practices would be most useful based on the topography, land use, and proximity of the field to water. We specifically looked at where grass waterways, nutrient removal wetlands, and contour buffer strips could be implemented. In the coming weeks, the goal is to take the ACPF results to Bronken and Hay Creek and get feedback from farmers on how useful and accurate this information is to them. We learned that this analysis could be improved with more input along the way from people who know the landscape the best. Although we feel very confident and proud of our work we were limited by our knowledge of the landscape, and the next time we use a tool like this we hope to communicate and use more knowledge from the community to make it even more accurate. There has been a lot of powerful and incredibly useful research that has come out of the LAKES REU program that has explained and discovered the issues with phosphorus pollution in the watershed and the meaning and value of the lake to the community. Our project has been a little different than some of our friends and past LAKES REU students because we weren’t answering a research question. Instead we were creating a planning tool for the community’s agricultural conservation practices. In many ways our project was special because we were able to take all that information and past research to inform our model and create a real life product that will hopefully be a useful tool in determining where conservation practices and resources will have the greatest impact on the health of the waterbodies. This program has taught me a lot about how to conduct research and opened my mind. I learned a lot from the other nine brilliant women in this program who all had skills and passions in all different fields. I also learned a lot from the community. I have spent all my life in Chicago and coming to Menomonie I had no idea what to expect. My research taught me the importance of including the community in research, and living in Menomonie has taught me about a different lifestyle as I have really gotten to know the people, community, and the beauty of the state of Wisconsin