This is a performance-based watershed scale project that includes approximately 50,000 acres in Hamilton County on the Southern reaches of the Boone River. It focuses on producer participation in development of area plans for land treatment and water management systems, and seeks to define local responses to environmental standards that also reflect agricultural objectives.
The partnership includes Prairie Rivers RC&D, the Iowa Soybean Association, The Nature Conservancy, local farmers and livestock producers, The Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, ISU Center for Agriculture and Rural Development (CARD), and other Federal and State Agencies. Funding has been procured to provide technical assistance for in-field corn nitrogen use efficiency testing, other field demonstrations, provide training in soil and water quality measurement, support a local watershed board, and model the entire watershed.
Funding includes a USDA joint project with CARD to use GIS to model the watershed and develop water quality plans and conservation policy recommendations.
A workshop was held in Oct. 2004 to assimilate existing data and expertise
on the biological assessment of water quality, with emphasis on Iowa-based
information. Experts from around the state convened to review “key ecological
attributes” and acceptable “ranges of variation” for each
attribute identified. Past and current research and monitoring projects were
reviewed also. The results of this workshop, combined with additional interviews
with experts and an extensive literature review, were summarized by Rachel
Neugarten and David Braun (The Nature Conservancy) and are available here:
Boone River Watershed Ecological Assessment: