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ARS Home » Plains Area » Temple, Texas » Grassland Soil and Water Research Laboratory » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #333674
Title: Distribution of selected soil and water conservation practices in the U.S. as identified with Google Earth

Author
item White, Michael
item Haglund, Leighton
item Gloe, Marcus
item BIEGER, KATRIN - Texas Agrilife Research
item Namphong, Brandon
item Gambone, Marilyn
item Hardy, Eric
item GAO, JUNGANG - Texas Agrilife Research
item YEN, HAW - Texas Agrilife Research
item Arnold, Jeffrey

Submitted to: Journal of the American Water Resources Association
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 5/9/2017
Publication Date: 10/1/2017
Citation: White, M.J., Haglund, L.E., Gloe, M.W., Bieger, K., Namphong, B.I., Gambone, M.A., Hardy, E.M., Gao, J., Yen, H., Arnold, J.G. 2017. Distribution of selected soil and water conservation practices in the U.S. as identified with Google Earth. Journal of the American Water Resources Association. 53(5):1229-1240. https://doi.org/10.1111/1752-1688.12552.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/1752-1688.12552

Interpretive Summary: Agriculture can be significant source of unwanted nutrients and sediment in U.S. lakes and rivers. Conservation practices are often installed on agricultural lands to reduce this pollution. There are no public sources to evaluate were and how often these conservation practices are used in the U.S. The goal of this research is to randomly select agricultural fields in the U.S. and identify any structural conservation practices that are present. In all 13,530 fields were examined. The data are summarized by region. The raw data are available via the web at http://nlet.brc.tamus.edu/Conservation.

Technical Abstract: The proper representation of conservation practices on agricultural lands is an important factor in large scale assessment of water quality in the U.S. Unfortunately, there are few publically available data sources from which to obtain these data at the local level and even fewer that provide data at the national scale. In this research, randomly selected points within agricultural lands were examined for selected conservation practices using Google Earth Pro aerial imagery. In total, 13,530 points had field boundaries digitized, and were subsequently examined and classified. The presence of terraces, grassed waterways, contour farming, center pivot irrigation, strip cropping, ponds, riparian vegetation, filter strips, and land cover were noted. Subjectivity among analysts was evaluated using duplicate samples and was found to be similar to image misclassification rates in other research. Conservation practice adoption rates for selected major river basins compared favorably with data collected by the Conservation Effects Assessment Project. The frequency of occurrence of each conservation practice was summarized and presented by ecoregion. To facilitate future research, point level data and software source code developed in this research are available via the web at http://nlet.brc.tamus.edu/Conservation. Aerial imagery was found to be a powerful, inexpensive, and easily accessible tool to assess large scale conservation practice implementation for certain conservation practices.