Dissertations and Theses @ UNI
Availability
Open Access Thesis
Keywords
Best management practices (Pollution prevention)--Iowa--Dry Run Creek (Black Hawk County); Soil erosion--Environmental aspects--Iowa--Dry Run Creek (Black Hawk County); Water--Pollution--Iowa--Dry Run Creek (Black Hawk County); Best management practices (Pollution prevention); Soil erosion--Environmental aspects; Water--Pollution; Academic theses;
Abstract
Soil erosion has been identified as a major contributor to water quality degradation. Agriculture is historically known for accelerating soil erosion. In Iowa, with 88% of land in agriculture use, agricultural practices have became the dominant source of nonpoint source pollution and soil erosion is the leading water problem in Iowa. Controls of soil erosion are needed. Best Management Practices (BMPs) are recognized as the most efficient way to control non-point source pollution, and numerous BMPs have been developed for soil erosion control. Therefore, it is important to have a decision support tool that can identify the soil erosion problem and allow a cost-benefit analysis of different soil erosion management scenarios to help watershed manager select appropriate soil and water conservation plans objectively. Currently, there is no spatial decision support tool that aims to evaluate agricultural BMPs nor one that provides suggestions for agricultural watershed conservation. The purpose of this study was to develop a spatial decision support tool which can be used to help watershed managers analyze soil erosion in agricultural watersheds and for selecting proper management practices for soil and water conservation. This tool was developed as a distributable extension for ArcGIS desktop and includes two major components: a critical area identification model and a BMP evaluation model. The critical area identification model uses the Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation (RUSLE) to estimate soil erosion risk and annual soil loss from a watershed, and highlights the areas vulnerable to erosion within the watershed. The BMP evaluation model developed here can simulate the implementation of BMPs, and estimate potential costs for implementing BMPs. These two models together can evaluate the soil erosion risk of a watershed, predict annual soil loss produced from a watershed before and after BMP implementation, and compare BMP implementation cost and effectiveness in soil-loss control for different soil conservation scenarios to help watershed managers choose conservation plans according to their budget and expectations. An application example is presented to test this spatial decision support tool with real data from the Dry Run Creek watershed in Black Hawk County of Iowa. The results of this example shows this GIS-based BMP evaluation tool able to help watershed managers and planners to assess watershed soil loss problem, prioritize critical area, and evaluate potential cost and benefit of BMPs to choose appropriate management practices.
Year of Submission
2009
Department
Department of Geography
First Advisor
Ramanathan Sugumaran
Second Advisor
David W. May
Third Advisor
Patrick Pease
Date Original
2009
Object Description
1 PDF file (98 leaves)
Copyright
©2009 Luhua Cai
Language
en
File Format
application/pdf
Recommended Citation
Cai, Luhua, "Development of a Spatial Decision Support Tool for Watershed Critical Area Identification of Soil Loss and Best Management Practices (BMPs) Evaluation" (2009). Dissertations and Theses @ UNI. 2267.
https://scholarworks.uni.edu/etd/2267
Comments
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