Resources

The paper discusses the Agricultural Conservation Planning Framework’s conceptual foundation, its technical components, key applications, including watershed planning, stakeholder engagement, and research, and it describes several case studies from the Midwest. The paper emphasizes that ACPF outputs are meant to inform, not prescribe, conservation decisions, enabling locally tailored, stakeholder-driven solutions with practical implementation guidance. Finally, it highlights ongoing training, support resources, and future directions for ACPF expansion to more diverse agricultural landscapes and integration with economic and hydrological modeling tools.

The paper evaluates the Beargrass Creek Watershed Approach Project in Indiana, which aimed to improve water quality by reducing agricultural nutrient loss through a voluntary, locally-led, and science-based conservation method. The project was studied using social science techniques, including surveys, interviews, and observations that identified the motivations and obstacles faced by producers and agency staff in adopting conservation practices. While awareness of water quality issues and knowledge of conservation methods increased among producers, notable changes in attitudes or behaviors were not seen during the project's short timeframe, with financial incentives and time for implementation identified as key needs. The paper concludes that trust-building, education, personal engagement, and long-term local coordination are essential for successful watershed conservation, and recommends these as priorities for future efforts.

This article introduces Extension professionals to the latest conservation planning tools: the Agricultural Conservation Planning Framework (ACPF) and the Financial and Nutrient Reduction Tool (FiNRT), which together utilize high-resolution spatial data to target and evaluate water quality best management practices (BMPs) in agricultural landscapes. The ACPF, built on ArcGIS, identifies areas of highest conservation need in small watersheds and suggests suitable in-field, edge-of-field, and riparian BMPs using detailed elevation, land use, and soil data. FiNRT complements ACPF by estimating potential nitrate-N reductions and providing cost-effectiveness analyses for various BMP scenarios, supporting financially informed conservation planning. The article explains how Extension can leverage these tools to facilitate more precise and cost-effective conservation with local partners, using their trusted relationships and local knowledge to ensure on-the-ground relevance and successful implementation. Ultimately, integrating ACPF and FiNRT empowers Extension and conservation professionals to focus efforts on areas with the greatest environmental benefit and supports stakeholder collaboration for long-term water quality improvements.

In this presentation, NRCS staff member Steven Hefner explains how the ACPF assists in identifying opportunities for implementing conservation practices across the landscape. He also discusses how the tool can be integrated into NRCS area-wide watershed assessments.

This USDA NRCS factsheet explains how to create maps that are accessible to producers with color vision deficiencies, which affect roughly 1 in 20 people, most commonly red-green color blindness. It shows how standard NRCS maps can be hard for colorblind users to interpret and offers practical tips such as using high-contrast colors, symbols, patterns, easy-to-read fonts, and black-and-white legibility checks to improve accessibility. The document also presents before-and-after examples, simulated through the Vischeck tool, to show how adjusted maps become clearer for users with red-green and blue-yellow color deficiencies.

The poster outlines enhancements to the Agricultural Conservation Planning Framework (ACPF) for identifying optimal landscape sites for phosphorus removal structures, also known as "P-Traps," to address dissolved reactive phosphorus (DRP) losses in agricultural watersheds. The new geospatial tools in ACPF Version 7 enable users to locate and rank subsurface, blind inlet, and surface phosphorus removal structures across diverse farm landscapes, using high-resolution LiDAR, flow routing, soil data, and proximity to hydrologically active areas—ultimately helping land managers treat phosphorus runoff more effectively and prioritize conservation practice placement. These updates empower planners with actionable site-selection outputs and field-scale rankings, making conservation strategies for phosphorus management much more data-driven and precise.

This paper presents a framework for prioritizing agricultural conservation practice (CP) locations to improve water quality, integrating the Agricultural Conservation Planning Framework (ACPF) with the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model. The proposed method uses multicriteria ranking by considering spatial sediment pollution hotspots (from SWAT), CP installation costs, and pollutant reduction effectiveness, to efficiently select CP placements from among the many suggested by ACPF. Case studies in two Pennsylvania watersheds (Conewago and Mahantango) demonstrate the approach for grassed waterways and water and sediment control basins, showing that combining criteria (yield and unit cost) leads to more cost-effective and targeted pollutant reductions than single criteria alone. The methodology is flexible and can be adapted to other pollutants, locations, and CP types, facilitating more efficient resource allocation in watershed planning. Ultimately, the study concludes that prioritizing conservation practices using this multicriteria framework can substantially enhance environmental benefits and cost-effectiveness compared to current first-come, first-served approaches.

This paper evaluates how digital elevation model (DEM) resolution and user-specified parameters influence the siting and density of agricultural best management practices (BMPs) using the Agricultural Conservation Planning Framework (ACPF) toolbox in three physiographically distinct mid-Atlantic US catchments. Results show that DEM resolution has a significant impact on the density and spatial distribution of grassed waterways, while the placement of contour buffer strips (CBS) and water and sediment control basins (WASCOBs) is more influenced by landscape type than DEM resolution. The study finds that using discrete values for the stream power index (SPI) threshold in grassed waterway siting produces output more consistent with physical landscape variation than the standard deviation-based approach recommended in the toolbox. Optimal BMP siting requires careful attention to both input data choices (especially DEM resolution, with 2-meter DEMs recommended) and parameter selection, as these factors can cause substantial differences in outputs. The authors conclude that while ACPF tools are generally robust across regions, users should understand these sensitivities and use local knowledge to inform parameterization, especially when transferring workflows beyond the Midwest.

This paper evaluates the use of the Agricultural Conservation Planning Framework (ACPF) in the eastern United States, using a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis. It finds that while ACPF’s geospatial tools can precisely identify conservation practice locations and expand planning options, there are challenges in adapting the toolbox to local crop types, existing conservation efforts, and regional hydrologic contexts. The authors emphasize that successful adoption depends on careful adaptation, local stakeholder engagement, and clear communication to ensure the outputs are relevant and effectively used.

This article argues that modern geospatial technologies, such as lidar-derived topography, remote sensing–based crop rotation mapping, and advanced soil surveys, can transform agricultural water quality management by mapping nutrient and sediment sources at the field scale. The authors critique decades-old “hotspot” concepts for nonpoint-source pollution (NPSP) control, finding that nutrient pollution, especially nitrogen in tile-drained Midwestern watersheds, is widespread and cannot be addressed solely by visually identified sites. Using the Agricultural Conservation Planning Framework (ACPF), they propose integrating by-field nitrogen application estimates, hydrologic flow path mapping, and conservation practice siting tools to rank and target locations for the greatest nutrient and sediment reduction. They also outline methods for estimating nitrogen loss from cropping histories, applying conservation practices (e.g., bioreactors, saturated buffers), and extending similar targeting approaches to sediment and phosphorus using streambank erosion analysis and erosion risk mapping. Ultimately, they call for watershed-scale experiments and “conservation-citizen science” to refine and apply these tools, aiming to make NPSP sources definable, mappable, and more effectively managed.