Soil Health Practices

[lolso225]

I am struggling to identified the table to be joined with the field boundaries to produce the "Soil Health Practices" ranking of highest priority, high priority, priority, and beneficial from the ACPF geodatabase.  I thought it was the runoff risk table although when I joined this table to field boundaries, the majority of the properties ranked "critical".

Any guidance.  This is for the Yellow Medicine Watershed District, MN ACPF modeling, completed by REPSEC.

Respectfully submitted.

L Olson

[Jessica Nelson]

Hello L Olson!

It is interesting to see these map products coming to the light of day again! The work was actually contracted to the Water Resources Center, Minnesota State University, Mankato (WRC) and I was one of the project leads with the WRC to produce this analysis. We did give our results to RESPEC to help them build out their HSPF-SAMM model, but the map products and corresponding GIS files were produced in partnership between WRC and YMRWD staff, as well as intersecting county and SWCD staff. 

The "Soil Health Practices" is not a direct output of the ACPF toolset, rather it is an interpretation of the "Runoff Risk" table output. The Runoff Risk table was produced using ACPF and translated to the map labels in your attached picture using the following key:

• Highest Priority = A-Very High
• High Priority = B-High
• Priority = C-Moderate
• Beneficial = D-Low

We changed the map labels to interpreted values as a way to identify which fields might benefit the most from cover crops, no-till, and filtering practices in order to address that potential runoff risk. The thought was that those "Highest Priority" fields might be good locations to target and reach out to landowners about potential soil health practices and programs.

Let me know if you have any more questions about the data products! I am no longer with the WRC, but happy to answer questions. You can reach me by email jn...@iastate.edu. 

-Jessica (Nelson) Stephenson