Article

 

Optimizing conservation practices in watersheds: Do community preferences matter? Public Deposited

Downloadable Content

Download PDF
https://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/concern/articles/th83m374m

Descriptions

Attribute NameValues
Creator
Abstract
  • This paper focuses on investigating (a) how landowner tenure and attitudes of farming communities affect the preference of individual conservation practices in agricultural watersheds, (b) how spatial distribution of landowner tenure affects the spatial optimization of conservation practices on a watershed scale, and (c) how the different attitudes and preferences of stakeholders can modify the effectiveness of alternatives obtained via classic optimization approaches that do not include the influence of existing social attitudes in a watershed during the search process. Results show that for Eagle Creek Watershed in central Indiana, USA, the most optimal alternatives (i.e., highest benefits for minimum economic costs) are for a scenario when the watershed consists of landowners who operate as farmers on their own land. When a different land-tenure scenario was used for the watershed (e.g., share renters and cash renters), the optimized alternatives had similar nitrate reduction benefits and sediment reduction benefits, but at higher economic costs. Our experiments also demonstrated that social attitudes can lead to alteration of optimized alternatives found via typical optimization approaches. For example, when certain practices were rejected by landowner operators whose attitudes toward practices were driven by economic profits, removal of these practices from the optimized alternatives led to a setback of nitrates reduction by 2–50%, peak flow reductions by 11–98%, and sediments reduction by 20–77%. In conclusion, this study reveals the potential loss in optimality of optimized alternatives possible, when socioeconomic data on farmer preferences and land tenure are not incorporated within watershed optimization investigations.
  • This is the publisher’s final pdf. The article is copyrighted by the American Geophysical Union and can be found at: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)1944-7973.
  • Keywords: watershed restoration, multiple objectives, conservation practices, social attitudes, optimization, SWAT
Resource Type
DOI
Date Available
Date Issued
Citation
  • Piemonti, A. D., M. Babbar-Sebens, and E. J. Luzar (2013), Optimizing conservation practices in watersheds: Do community preferences matter?, Water Resources Research, 49, 6425–6449. doi:10.1002/wrcr.20491
Journal Title
Journal Volume
  • 49
Journal Issue/Number
  • 10
Rights Statement
Funding Statement (additional comments about funding)
  • We want to thank the funding agencies:National Science Foundation (Award ID 1014693), United States Departmentof Agriculture–Natural Resources Conservation Service (Award ID68-52KY-1–058).
Publisher
Peer Reviewed
Language
Replaces

Relationships

Parents:

This work has no parents.

Items