Hydrologic processes in the pinyon-juniper woodlands of the western region of the United States are variable because of the inherent interactions among the occurring precipitation regimes, geomorphological settings, and edaphic conditions that characterize the ecosystem. A wide range of past and present land-use practices further complicates comprehensive evaluations of these hydrologic process...

Optimal water quality pollution control comes from locating critical nonpoint source pollution areas within a watershed and applying site-specific conservation practices. However, management decisions are implemented at the farm-level. While site-specific conservation practices are crucial for environmental protection, reduction strategies must have economic benefit to the producer if they are ...

Excerpted from: R. Pitt, M. Lilburn. S.R. Durrans, S. Burian, S. Nix, J. Vorhees, and J. Martinson (I had a lot of help from my friends). Guidance Manual for Integrated Wet Weather Flow (WWF) Collection and Treatment Systems for Newly Urbanized Areas (New WWF Systems). U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Urban Watershed Management Branch, Edison, New Jersey. December 1999. This chapter was wr...

Introduction to Watershed Ecology http://www.epa.gov/watertrain 1 NOTICE: This PDF file was adapted from an on-line training module of the EPA’s Watershed Academy Web, found at http://www.epa.gov/watertrain. To the extent possible, it contains the same material as the on-line version. Some interactive parts of the module had to be reformatted for this noninteractive text presentation. A self-te...

Agricultural practices have often been scrutinized for degradation of water quality in rivers, lakes and estuaries in the U.S. (USEPA, 2013). Studies at various scales ranging from small plots, farms, fields, to watersheds are being conducted to evaluate conservation effects on non-point source pollution (NPSP; Mudgal et al., 2012; Udawatta et al., 2011a, 2011b). However, In situ studies at the...

Multi-objective optimization linked with an urban stormwater model is used in this study to identify cost-effective low impact development (LID) implementation designs for small urbanizing watersheds. The epsilon-Non-Dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm II (ε-NSGAII) has been coupled with the US Environmental Protection Agency’s Stormwater Management Model (SWMM) to balance the costs and the hyd...

and Agriculture (NIFA) and Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) to evaluate the effects of agricultural conservation practices on spatial patterns and trends in water quality at the watershed scale. In some projects, participants also investigated how social and economic factors influence implementation and maintenance of practices. The 13 projects were conducted from 2004 to 2011 as pa...

The use of contour strips of perennial vegetation with bio-fuel potential can improve surface water quality by reducing NO3-N and sediment outflow from cropland to surface water-bodies. It also has economic benefits of producing ethanol. In this study, The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model was applied to a watershed in Iowa, USA to examine the effectiveness of contour strips of switch...