An Agricultural Air Quality Planning Tool for Conservation Planners

Abstract

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA’s) Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) works with America’s private landowners to conserve natural resources. In addition to traditional emphases on soil and water conservation, the NRCS has recently focused on air quality, with Clean Air now identified as one of only three Venture Goals in the new 2005-2010 NRCS Strategic Plan. The NRCS Air Quality and Atmospheric Change (AQAC) Technology Development Team has developed an Agricultural AQAC Planning Tool that helps NRCS employees, as well as conservation partners, identify important local, regional and global air quality and atmospheric change resource concerns. This paper describes this web-based tool. The tool focuses on the four priority NRCS air-related resource concern components: Particulate Matter, Ozone Precursors, Odors, and Greenhouse Gases and Carbon Sequestration. It provides the user with specific NRCS-approved practices, as well as other activities that can be considered for helping address resource concern components that the tool has shown to be important for any given land parcel or production facility. The goal is that NRCS employees and their clients will be more fully appraised of agricultural air quality issues that they are facing (either regulated or of importance for other reasons), and then provide specific management information that can help mitigate air quality impacts and/or reduce emissions.