Combining precision conservation technologies into a flexible framework to facilitate agricultural watershed planning

The need to reduce nutrient loads from agricultural watersheds poses a daunting challenge, considering the continental scale of water quality problems in the Gulf of Mexico (Turner et al. 2008), Great Lakes (Joose and Baker 2010), and Chesapeake Bay (Russell et al. 2008). Strategies to address nutrient reduction have suggested that a mix of practices will be required across multiple landscape positions to achieve water quality goals (Iowa Nutrient Reduction Strategy Science Team 2012). Control of both nitrogen and phosphorus may be critical to mitigate eutrophication of freshwaters, estuaries, and marine shelves (Paerl 2009), further emphasizing the need for comprehensive approaches to control agricultural nutrient losses. However, water quality must be improved while agricultural production is becoming more intensified (Lobell et al. 2009). Practices that sustain soil health offer the clearest opportunity to maintain crop production, water supply, and other ecosystem services derived from our agricultural landscapes (Kibblewhite et al. 2008). Our premise is that precision conservation technologies, which can help manage agricultural soils within fields (Delgado and Berry 2008) and place conservation practices below fields (Tomer et al. 2003), could provide the basis for developing watershed-specific strategies to improve environmental conditions and agricultural production with efficiency and flexibility, if…