Ecosystem and their types ||Environmental Science||.pdf
Identifying and comparing climate and water quality quantification tools
1. Michelle Perez, PhD
Water Initiative
Director
Albuquerque, NM
August 1, 2018
Identifying & Comparing Climate &
Water Quality Quantification Tools To Drive
Conservation Practice Adoption
4. Why quantify outcomes?
Water pollution & climate
change are serious challenges
Limited quantitative evidence
that soil health & other
conservation practices “work”
Quantification will hopefully help
“sell” conservation better &
faster
Quantification will hopefully help
farmers & groups set & achieve
sustainability goals
Photo: Ron Nichols, NRCS
5. Why is AFT working
in this IL watershed?
Macoupin Creek (HUC8)
Watershed:
- One of 3 highest P-yielding
watersheds in Illinois
- > 2 lb P/ac/yr average
watershed losses
- 617,000 acres
Source: IL NRS report. Figure 6.1
6. AFT IL RCPP project:
6 HUC12s in Macoupin Watershed (HUC8)
8. AFT reviewed 10 tools for UMC project
To help us measure & report on
economic & environmental outcomes of
our project at the field-, watershed- &
project-scales
To identify “hotspots” in our six HUC12s
since it’s 135,000 acres
To develop an EPA 9-element
watershed-based plan
Share analyses to help other members
of the conservation community do
similar work
9. Members of the conservation community:
• NGOs
• Foundations
• State agencies
• SWCDs
• NRCS
• Extension specialists
• Ag retailers
• Crop consultants
• Corporate supply chain leaders, etc.
who are encouraging farmer adoption of
conservation practices
Intended audience for paper
Photo: Ron Nichols, NRCS
12. Reasons to quantify outcomes
Outreach,
Education
&
Adoption
Watershed
Outcomes
Project:
Goal-
Setting &
Reporting
State
Nutrient
Reduction or
Greenhouse
Gas
Mitigation
Opportunity
Assessments
& Strategy
Tracking &
Reporting
Voluntary
Payments for
Ecosystem
Services:
Goal-Setting,
Pay-for-
Performance,
& Reporting
Regulatory
Nutrient
Trading
Corporate
Sustainability
Supply Chain
Goal-Setting,
Progress
Tracking
Less Rigor
More Rigor
Note: Order of reasons is illustrative
& subject to discussion & re-
ordering
13. Honing in on what you need a tool to do
Economic or environmental quantification
Water quality or also climate outcomes
Site-specific or generalized estimates
Individual or cumulative results of many
farmers
Management or structural practices
Edge-of-field or delivered to streams
focus
Photo: Ron Nichols, NRCS
14. There are always trade-offs. Don’t let the
perfect be the enemy of the good.
16. Tools should meet 4 criteria
1. Users - Can be used either
directly by farmers or by
conservation community working
with farmers (not by modeling
experts)
2. Function - Quantify water quality,
climate, or economic outcomes of
conservation practices as applied
to specific fields or at the
watershed-scale
3. Access - Is ideally free or has an
affordable fee
4. Readiness – Is currently ready to
go with no (or little) calibration
needed
Photo: Ron Nichols, NRCS
17. 1. Who designed the tool?
2. What was the tool designed to do?
3. At what scale does the tool operate?
4. Is tool publicly available or only to members? Free or has a fee?
5. What water quality & climate change resource concerns &
changes can be estimated? (N, P, sediment losses, carbon
sequestration, nitrous oxide emissions, methane emissions, etc.)
6. Where can the tool be used? Which state, agro-ecoregion, type
of crop production?
7. Which CPs can be run thru “what if” scenarios?
8. What model & type of model is the tool based on? (e.g.,
statistical / empirical v process-based / mechanistic) Data used?
9. Does it include economic info as input or output?
10. Who are the intended users? Who is using / has used this tool?
11. Is the tool peer-reviewed ?
12. What are the tools limitations?
13. What background or training materials are provided?
Questions asked about each tool
22. Quantification tools compared
Water Quality-only Tools
1. Region 5 Tool
2. Nutrient Tracking Tool (NTT)
3. A Conservation Planning
Framework (ACPF)
4. Model My Watershed Tool
5. Soil Calculator Tool (fee)
6. Prioritizing, Targeting, Mapping
Application (PTMApp) Tool (fee)
7. Spatial Watershed Assessment
Measurement & Modeling
(SWAMM) Tool (fee)
8. Chesapeake Conservancy’s Tool
(fee)
GHG-only Tools
1. COMET-Farm Tool
2. COMET-Planner Tool
Tools that Quantify
Both WQ & GHG
1. Profit Zone Manager (fee)
Economics-only Tools
1. Conservation Cropping Systems
Calculator
2. Cover Crops Calculator
23. Tools that didn’t
fit criteria
1. RUSLE2
2. FieldPrint Calculator
3. Precision Conservation
Management (PCM)
4. Resource Stewardship
Environmental Tool (RSET)
Tools that may be
included
1. SNAP-Plus but WI only
2. NBMP & PBMP tools but
MN only
31. Establish standardized reporting requirements for
experimental field data to calibrate & validate models
1. Exact location of field with soils,
slopes, & buffer info
2. Presence, depth, spacing of tile drains
3. Detailed management data – real date
scheduling of amount & type of
fertilizer applied, tillage type, harvest
yield, planting details, mgt & structural
BMPs
4. Units of reported constituents are
ideally unit-area loads or total loads
with field size rather than
concentrations
Recommendation is from Limnotech, 2017.
32. Saving the Land that Sustains Us
www.farmland.org
mperez@farmland.org; 410-353-5492 (cell);
Saving the Land and Water that Sustains Us
What do you think?
Let’s discuss!
33. New 2018 AFT CIG grant!
AFT and our local partners in 5 states (CA, IL, OH, NY, VA) will accelerate
adoption of Soil Health Management System (SHMS) practices on land
that farmers own and land they rent by:
1. Quantifying the economic, soil health, water quality, and
greenhouse gas outcomes experienced by farmers who have
successfully adopted SHMS,
2. Publishing those findings in short, compelling case studies,
3. Sharing the case studies with farmers & women non-operator
landowners who are curious about SHMS to alternative leases, and
4. Providing tailored technical and financial assistance that may be
needed to adopt and successfully maintain SHMS.
34. Tools AFT will use in new CIG to quantify
outcomes
1. Economics – Partial budget
analysis using USDA’s Level III T
Chart Approach
2. Soil health – NRCS & state soil
health cards & buckets
3. Water quality – USDA’s Nutrient
Tracking Tool
4. Climate – USDA’s COMET-Farm
Tool
Editor's Notes
Source: View of Scioto Mile from Rich Street Bridge. http://www.columbusddc.com/projects/scioto-mile
From Wikipedia: A wicked problem is a problem that is difficult or impossible to solve because of incomplete, contradictory, and changing requirements that are often difficult to recognize. The use of the term "wicked" here has come to denote resistance to resolution, rather than evil….
A problem whose solution requires a great number of people to change their mindsets and behavior is likely to be a wicked problem. Therefore, many standard examples of wicked problems come from the areas of public planning and policy. These include global climate change,[7] natural hazards, healthcare, the AIDS epidemic, pandemic influenza, international drug trafficking, nuclear weapons, nuclear energy, waste and social injustice
Verbally – note that there are only 3 dark orange-colored watersheds and Macoupin Creek is one of them.
Find the version with the two green USGS monitoring locations
JEN FILIPIAK WORKED WITH NRCS & SWCD LOCAL FIELD OFFICES TO IDENTIFY A PROJECT AREA within the HUC8 Macoupin Watershed and honed in on the six subwatersheds you see in the south eastern-most
section of watershed.
From Wikipedia: A wicked problem is a problem that is difficult or impossible to solve because of incomplete, contradictory, and changing requirements that are often difficult to recognize. The use of the term "wicked" here has come to denote resistance to resolution, rather than evil….
A problem whose solution requires a great number of people to change their mindsets and behavior is likely to be a wicked problem. Therefore, many standard examples of wicked problems come from the areas of public planning and policy. These include global climate change,[7] natural hazards, healthcare, the AIDS epidemic, pandemic influenza, international drug trafficking, nuclear weapons, nuclear energy, waste and social injustice
From Wikipedia: A wicked problem is a problem that is difficult or impossible to solve because of incomplete, contradictory, and changing requirements that are often difficult to recognize. The use of the term "wicked" here has come to denote resistance to resolution, rather than evil….
A problem whose solution requires a great number of people to change their mindsets and behavior is likely to be a wicked problem. Therefore, many standard examples of wicked problems come from the areas of public planning and policy. These include global climate change,[7] natural hazards, healthcare, the AIDS epidemic, pandemic influenza, international drug trafficking, nuclear weapons, nuclear energy, waste and social injustice
From Wikipedia: A wicked problem is a problem that is difficult or impossible to solve because of incomplete, contradictory, and changing requirements that are often difficult to recognize. The use of the term "wicked" here has come to denote resistance to resolution, rather than evil….
A problem whose solution requires a great number of people to change their mindsets and behavior is likely to be a wicked problem. Therefore, many standard examples of wicked problems come from the areas of public planning and policy. These include global climate change,[7] natural hazards, healthcare, the AIDS epidemic, pandemic influenza, international drug trafficking, nuclear weapons, nuclear energy, waste and social injustice
From Wikipedia: A wicked problem is a problem that is difficult or impossible to solve because of incomplete, contradictory, and changing requirements that are often difficult to recognize. The use of the term "wicked" here has come to denote resistance to resolution, rather than evil….
A problem whose solution requires a great number of people to change their mindsets and behavior is likely to be a wicked problem. Therefore, many standard examples of wicked problems come from the areas of public planning and policy. These include global climate change,[7] natural hazards, healthcare, the AIDS epidemic, pandemic influenza, international drug trafficking, nuclear weapons, nuclear energy, waste and social injustice
From Wikipedia: A wicked problem is a problem that is difficult or impossible to solve because of incomplete, contradictory, and changing requirements that are often difficult to recognize. The use of the term "wicked" here has come to denote resistance to resolution, rather than evil….
A problem whose solution requires a great number of people to change their mindsets and behavior is likely to be a wicked problem. Therefore, many standard examples of wicked problems come from the areas of public planning and policy. These include global climate change,[7] natural hazards, healthcare, the AIDS epidemic, pandemic influenza, international drug trafficking, nuclear weapons, nuclear energy, waste and social injustice
From Wikipedia: A wicked problem is a problem that is difficult or impossible to solve because of incomplete, contradictory, and changing requirements that are often difficult to recognize. The use of the term "wicked" here has come to denote resistance to resolution, rather than evil….
A problem whose solution requires a great number of people to change their mindsets and behavior is likely to be a wicked problem. Therefore, many standard examples of wicked problems come from the areas of public planning and policy. These include global climate change,[7] natural hazards, healthcare, the AIDS epidemic, pandemic influenza, international drug trafficking, nuclear weapons, nuclear energy, waste and social injustice
Email or call me if you have suggestions for methods to measure outcomes you think would be helpful to us.