Soil Conservation An Assessment of the National Resources Inventory, Volume 2 (1986) / Chapter Skim
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11. Potential Uses of the NRI in State and Local Decision Making
11. Potential Uses of the NRI in State and Local Decision Making
Pages 296-314
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From page 296... ...
Missouri has a very serious soil erosion problem. Missouri ranks second in the country behind Tennessee in rates of erosion from cropland acres e Its erosion rate is over 10 tons of soil loss/cropland acre, which amounts to nearly 160 tons of soil loss each year (USDA, 1981)
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From page 297... ...
This area, called the Cherokee Prairie, has many severe erosion problems, but it receives little publicity because its erosion rates are not as dramatically high as those of the northwest portion of the state. This nearly level to gently sloping area is intensively farmed and, with low water intake due to slightly heavy textured surface soil, erosion rates are normally high.
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From page 298... ...
. The development of the PSU data base was divided into four steps: data entry and verification, digitizing PSU locations, digitizing ancillary data, and implementation of a retrieval and display system (Johannsen et al., 1984)
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USING THE PSU DATA BASE The Soil Conservation Service (SCS) and the Office of Soil and Water Conservation Programs of the Missouri Department of Natural Resources are currently requesting specific illustrations and results from the Missouri PSU data base.
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The data can also be presented in a table (such as the soil loss by land capability class in Table 1) or by pie chart (such as Figure 5, which shows the distribution of different crops in SCS Area 3)
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Cropland distribution C Cropland with greater than 10 tons/acre/year soil loss FIGURE 2 Cropland PSUs in Missouri with information presented in different formats.
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302 A Row crop ~ _ ~ :~: _ C
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Row crop with greater than 10 tons/acre/year soil loss FIGURE 4 Use of NRI data, SCS Area 3, northeast Missouri.
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426,317 T to 2T5.084,017 >2T18.7911,869 All11.9922,203 Grassland |
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All the soil and water conservation districts are in the process of developing 5-year plans. Information from all available sources and the NRI data will be used to establish priorities for starting conservation.
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SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS The data base management system established for analyzing Missouri's NRI data serves as a model for query, display, and application of these data in other states. Further data collections of this magnitude will likely consider a geographic information system approach in planning data collection and use of results.
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From page 307... ...
Row crop with greater than 10 tons/acre/year soil loss FIGURE 7 Use of NRI data for Monroe County (northeast Missouri) with county-reliable samples.
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1984. Missouri's National Resources Inventory.
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OVERALL OBSERVATIONS The NRI is a national assessment tool, first and foremost, and while the 1982 NRI is accurate to the level of Major Land Resource Area (MLRA) , there are real limitations to its use at the county level and, for some purposes, even at the state and national levels.
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From page 310... ...
The agency uses this data in its nonpoint source program to locate potential water quality problem areas resulting from soil erosion, and it recently expanded this effort to locate cropland and
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From page 311... ...
The NRI data are also used by the Department of Transportation and Development in its water quality management basin reports, by the Water Resources Studies Commission to identify potentially serious groundwater quantity and quality problems, by the Louisiana Department of Agriculture in selected public information programs, by the Corps of Engineers to identify land cover/use and soil erosion in watersheds of reservoirs, and by the Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service to estimate soil erosion on marginal lands by parish and MLRA. The Department of Civil Engineering at LSU is using the NRI information in a pilot project at its Remote Sensing Laboratory to verify Landsat data.
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The data were also used to establish parameters for development of a statewide soil erosion assessment computer model. And state officials used NRI information when seeking the governor's support for agricultural land protection initiatives.
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The NRI information is of limited value in states with extensive federal land holdings. As the governor of
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As a result, pressure is likely to continue for data accurate to the county level in future NRIs. If the conduct of those assessments is to continue to rely on people at the state and local levels, some consideration must be given to accommodating their interests.
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