USE OF SOIL AND WATER PROTECTION PRACTICES AMONG FARMERS IN THE NORTH CENTRAL REGION OF THE UNITED STATES1

ABSTRACT: Data were collected in the fall of 1998 and the winter of 1999 from 1,011 land owner‐operators within three watersheds in the North Central Region of the United States to assess adoption of soil and water protection practices. Farm owner‐operators were asked to indicate how frequently they used 18 different agricultural production practices. Many farmers within the three watersheds had adopted conservation protection practices. However, they also employed production practices that could negate many of the environmental benefits associated with conservation practices in use. Comparison of adoption behaviors used in the three watersheds revealed significant differences among the study groups. Respondents in the Iowa and Ohio watersheds reported greater use of conservation production systems than did farmers in Minnesota. However, there were no significant differences between Ohio and Iowa farmers in terms of use of conservation production practices. This was surprising, since farmers in the Ohio watershed had received massive amounts of public and private investments to motivate them to adopt and to continue using conservation production systems. These findings bring into serious question the use of traditional voluntary conservation programs such as those employed in the Ohio watershed. Study findings suggest that new policy approaches should be considered. It is argued that “whole farm planning” should be a significant component of new agricultural conservation policy.     

SELECTION OF APPROPRIATE EVAPORATION ESTIMATION TECHNIQUE FOR CONTINUOUS MODELING1

ABSTRACT: The importance of evaporation in hydrologic modeling has been investigated by analysis of water budget at various scales and application of a water management model at plot scale. The data at all scales indicate that evaporation constitutes a major hydrological output. Accurate determination of watershed evapotranspiration depends upon appropriate accounting for the various components of evapotranspiration and their areal and temporal variability. An application of a water management model has revealed that the ranking of the sensitivity of input parameters depends upon the method of determination of evapotranspiration.     

COOPERATIVE MANAGEMENT OF THE DUNGENESS WATERSHED TO PROTECT SALMON IN WASHINGTON STATE1

ABSTRACT: Over the last decade, the Jamestown S'Klallam Tribe has formed partnerships with their neighboring county government, irrigation districts, property owners, and state and federal agencies in an effort to save the dwindling runs of Dungeness River salmon. Although considerable progress has been made to begin the recovery process, the watershed is included in recent listings of Pacific Northwest salmon under the Endangered Species Act. Under the coordination of an active watershed council, significant improvements have been made in water conservation and the protection of instream flows. Cooperation between the Tribe, irrigation districts and the Washington Department of Ecology resulted in a trust water rights agreement and the reduction of late summer water withdrawals by one‐third.     

EXPORT COEFFICIENT MODELING TO ASSESS PHOSPHORUS LOADING IN AN URBAN WATERSHED1

ABSTRACT: An export coefficient modeling approach was used to assess the influence of land use on phosphorus loading to a Southern Ontario stream. A model was constructed for the 1995–1996 water year and calibrated within ± 3 percent of the observed mean concentration of total phosphorus. It was found that runoff from urban areas contributed most to the loading of phosphorus to the stream. When the model was assessed by running it for the 1977–1978 water year, using water quality and land use data collected independently, agreement within ± 7 percent was obtained. The model was then used to forecast the impact of future urban development proposed for the watershed, in terms of phosphorus loading, and to evaluate the reduction in loading resulting from several urban best management practices (BMP). It was determined that phosphorus removal will have to be applied to all the urban runoff from the watershed to appreciably reduce stream phosphorus concentration. Of the BMP designs assessed, an infiltration pond system resulted in the greatest phosphorus load reduction, 50 percent from the 1995–1996 baseline.     

Multiple attribute evaluation of landscape management

Economic approaches to the valuation of ecological services have several limitations. Some of these limitations can be overcome using the multiple attribute decision-making model developed in this paper. The model postulates that a private or public decision-maker selects a site/landscape management plan based on the biophysical and economic attributes of alternative management plans, the decision-maker’s preferences for attributes, and constraints on the selection of a management plan.Two cases are examined. Case A is a watershed consisting of publicly owned land that is managed at the site, management unit and landscape scales. Management is based on the philosophy of ecosystem management. Case B is a watershed composed of several privately owned units that are managed at the site scale by decision-makers whose primary motivation is economic profit. The preferred management plan in both cases is determined using a two-stage procedure. The first stage uses a stochastic programming model to identify the most efficient management plans for a site/landscape. The second stage determines which efficient management plan for a site/landscape is preferred by maximizing an expected utility function that is additive in the attributes and assumes that the decision-maker is risk neutral.Whether a land-management plan results in strongly or weakly sustainable resource conditions is evaluated. Strong sustainability requires the probability of exceeding the minimum acceptable value of an attribute to be greater than or equal to a pre-determined reliability level for each attribute. Weak sustainability requires the same condition except that it applies to a composite index of the attributes rather than each attribute. Bayes theorem is used to evaluate uncertainty about whether the state of a landscape is sustainable.     

流域环境系统不确定性多目标规划方法及应用——不确定性模糊多目标规划模型

提出一种新的不确定性模糊多目标规划（IFMOP）模型。该模型将不确定性信息直接引入优化过程,从而得到以区间数表示的优化解;在模型优化解的解译过程中,将各个变量在区间内进行适当组合就能得到各种决策方案;模型能够与决策者直接进行交互,充分考虑决策者的反馈意见,以便获得最终满意的决策方案。该模型计算方便,其求解过程中不会生成复杂的中间模型。该模型已被成功地应用于云南洱海流域可持续发展环境规划研究     

美国的流域保护方法(WPA)

本文简要介绍了美国许多州正在实施的流域保护方法,并就流域保护方法的作用、流域保护规划以及流域保护的计算机支持等方面提出了自己的看法。     

流域尺度氮流失的环境风险评价

采用故障树及概率分析方法,对九龙江流域氮的流失风险进行定性与定量评价.通过建立故障树定性分析了九龙江流域氮流失的主要风险来源.结果表明,氮流失风险大小主要与肥料施用、畜禽养殖废物的处置及农田耕作有关.在GIS技术支持下,通过土地利用、土壤等数据的计算,结合田间调查结果与专家意见,确定故障树基本故障事件概率,继而对氮流失风险进行定量评价.最佳管理措施模拟评价结果表明,降低施肥水平,在养殖场周边建立植被过滤带,增加河岸林截留入河沉积物等措施可以有效降低氮流失风险,在九龙江流域可以考虑优先实施.      

Using NDVI to Assess Vegetative Land Cover Change in Central Puget Sound

We used the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) in the rapidly growing Puget Sound region over three 5-year time blocks between 1986–1999 at three spatial scales in 42 Watershed Administrative Units (WAUs) to assess changes in the amounts and patterns of green vegetation. On average, approximately 20% of the area in each WAU experienced significant NDVI change over each 5-year time block. Cumulative NDVI change over 15 years (summing change over each 5-year time block) was an average of approximately 60% of each WAU, but was as high as 100% in some. At the regional scale, seasonal weather patterns and green-up from logging were the primary drivers of observed increases in NDVI values. At the WAU scale, anthropogenic factors were important drivers of both positive and negative NDVI change. For example, population density was highly correlated with negative NDVI change over 15 years (r = 0.66, P < 0.01), as was road density (r = 0.71, P < 0.01). At the smallest scale (within 3 case study WAUs) land use differences such as preserving versus harvesting forest lands drove vegetation change. We conclude that large areas within most watersheds are continually and heavily impacted by the high levels of human use and development over short time periods. Our results indicate that varying patterns and processes can be detected at multiple scales using changes in NDVIa values.     

Assessing the Impact of Leather Industry to Water Quality in the Aojing Watershed in Zhejiang Province, China

The development of the leather industry in the Aojiang watershed of Zhejiang province increased the release of waste water. In the waste water, ammonium nitrogen (NH⁺ ₄-N) and germanium (Ge) are the main pollutants. In recent years, literature has documented that the intake of high concentrations of NH⁺ ₄-N and Ge harms human health and biological species. This paper focuses on assessing the trends of NH⁺ ₄-N and Ge concentrations in the released waste water in Aojiang watershed and on understanding their relationships with the released waste water using regression and correlation statistics. The paper also utilizes the integrated pollution index to evaluate the water quality in the watershed. Preliminary results show that, from 1992 to 1998, the concentrations of NH⁺ ₄-N and total Ge increased 13 and 14 times, respectively, and they decreased somewhat after 1998. The concentrations of NH⁺ ₄-N and total Ge are positively correlated to the amount of released waste water. These concentrations of NH⁺ ₄-N and Ge, respectively, exceed 12 and 3 times, of the water standards. The water quality in the watershed degraded from Type III in 1992 to over Type V in 2003 when they were compared with the national water quality standards. It appeared that the pollution had positive correlation with leather industry production. The degraded water has no doubt affected human health and the ecosystem health. These results can provide scientific information for the local government to reasonably adjust the industry structure and reduce the pollution to protect the environment.