Historic Water Quality Concerns• High nutrients• Impacts on downstream Cutler Reservoir• Causes included poor management of riparian corridors and uplands,

poor manure management, flood irrigation,

Best Management Practices implemented from 1990-2000• Animal waste structures and nutrient management• Riparian area and stream channel protection, off-stream watering• Sprinkler irrigation systems and management• Improved Grazing management

Rates of BMP Implementation & Maintenance

Utah’s Conservation Effectiveness Assessment Project: Taking Lessons Learned to the Next Level

Little Bear CEAP Project Background RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS

Analysis of Historic Water Quality Records and Implementation of Continuous Flow Monitoring System

Historic WQ data lessons:• Trends suggest WQ benefits from project• YET DATA RECORD WAS INSUFFICIENT

because of spatial and temporal variability

Results of 3 Years of Continuous Measurement of Proxy WQ Indicators:

• High variability in nutrient runoff due to seasonal and weather events make traditional grab-sampling methods very unreliable.• Development of integrated system of continuous flow and surrogate monitors can be accomplished at reasonable costs.• Measures of turbidity can be a reliable surrogate for Total Suspended Solids (TSS) and Total Phosphorus (TP)

IMPACT AND USE OF CEAP RESEARCH IN UTAH, WESTERN REGION, AND NATION

Nancy Mesner (USU Dept Watershed Science), Doug Jackson-Smith (USU Dept of Sociology, Social Work and Anthropology), David Stevens and Jeff Horsburgh (Dept of Civil and Environmental Engineering)

Lessons Learned Not all Conservation BMPs are Successfully

Implemented or Maintained Important lessons can be gained by conducting

follow-up assessments Traditional WQ monitoring systems are not well

equipped to assess BMP impacts Need to design monitoring systems around

specific BMP objectives Need to identify & quantify major sources of

variability in dynamic systems Need to understand pollutant pathways and

transformation

Utilization of our Research Scholarly Contributions

Presentation at 20+ professional meetings, 4 theses and dissertations, 10 manuscript targeted to peer reviewed journals

Creation of watershed monitoring “TestBed” Led to new NSF and US-EPA support to extend continuous flow network;

availability of real-time data on public website

Development of Watershed Monitoring Guidebook Distributed regionally and nationally

Impacts on State Non-Point Source Programs Presentations to numerous local audiences, Utah Water Quality

Conference, leaders in state Depts. of Agric. & Env Quality CEAP team contracted to do Utah NPS program evaluation Partnerships with new watershed teams for extending this work

http://littlebearriver.usu.edu

Key Publications: Jackson-Smith, D., E. de la Hoz, M. Halling, J. McEvoy and J.

Horsburgh. (2010). “Measuring conservation program BMP implementation and maintenance at the watershed scale,” The Journal of Soil and Water Conservation 65(6):363-373.

Horsburgh, J. S., A. Spackman Jones, D. G. Tarboton, D. K. Stevens, N. O. Mesner (2009), A sensor network for high frequency estimation of water quality constituent fluxes using surrogates, Environmental Modeling & Software 25(9): 1031-1044. doi:10.1016/j.envsoft.2009.10.012.

Project Goals

• Determine whether publicly-funded programs to reduce phosphorus loadings from nonpoint sources into surface waters in the Little Bear River watershed are effective;

• Examine the strengths and weaknesses of different water quality monitoring programs; and

• Make recommendations to stakeholders to ensure that future agricultural management efforts are targeted towards the most effective and socioeconomically viable BMPs.

Original Implementation:• 83% of individual BMPs successfully implemented• 32% of farms implemented all BMPS• 60% of farms implemented more than 50% of BMPs

Ongoing Maintenance:• 21% of implemented BMPS had been abandoned.

(1/3 were on farms that were no longer active. 2/3 were on active farms but were no longer used) Conclusion: 2/3 of all originally contracted BMPs were STILL in use.

Remote Sensing to Detect Impact of Riparian BMPs

This research is supported by CSREES CEAP Competitive Watershed Grant UTAW-2004-05671