Methods to prioritize placement of riparian buffers for improved water quality

Placement of Riparian Forest Buffers to Improve Water Quality

Riparian forest buffers can improve stream water quality, provided they intercept and remove contaminants from surface runoff and/or shallow groundwater. Soils, topography, hydrology, and surficial geology determine the capability of forest buffers to intercept and treat these flows. This paper describes landscape analysis techniques for identifying and mapping locations where forest buffers ca...

Cost-effective Targeting of Riparian Buffers in Georgia When Water Quality Benefits are Difficult to Measure

An approach for using soil surveys to guide the placement of water quality buffers

Vegetative buffers may function better for filtering agricultural runoff in some locations than in others because of intrinsic characteristics of the land on which they are placed. The objective of this study was to develop a method based on soil survey attributes that can be used to compare soil map units for how effectively a buffer installed in them could remove pollutants from crop field ru...

Improved indexes for targeting placement of buffers of Hortonian runoff

Targeting specific locations within agricultural watersheds for installing vegetative buffers has been advocated as a way to enhance the impact of buffers and buffer programs on stream water quality. Existing models for targeting buffers of Hortonian, or infiltration-excess, runoff are not well developed. The objective was to improve on an existing soil survey–based approach that would provide ...

Water Quality Functions of Riparian Forest Buffers in Chesapeake Bay Watersheds

/ Maryland, Virginia, and Pennsylvania, USA, have agreed to reduce nutrient loadings to Chesapeake Bay by 40% by the year 2000. This requires control of nonpoint sources of nutrients, much of which comes from agriculture. Riparian forest buffer systems (RFBS) provide effective control of nonpoint source (NPS) pollution in some types of agricultural watersheds. Control of NPS pollution is depend...