Evaluating Nutrient Tracking Tool (NTT) and simulated conservation practices

Abstract

The Nutrient Tracking Tool (NTT) provides farmers, government officials, researchers and others an efficient, cost-effective, and user-friendly method of evaluating the impacts of proposed or existing conservation practices on water quality and quantity. In addition to cultural practices (e.g., nutrient management), commonly used structural conservation practices such as filter strips, waterways, cattle exclusion, terraces, and wetlands can be evaluated in NTT with a few key strokes after selecting the user’s field of interest. NTT estimates the impacts of each practice or combination of practices on sediment losses, nutrient losses, and runoff, as well as farm production indicators such as crop yield. Through its interface with the Agricultural Policy environmental eXtender (APEX) model, NTT simulates each structural conservation practice using rigorous algorithms while providing the user with a simple interface to access the results. In this paper, six conservation practices are evaluated using NTT. The results presented indicate that most of these practices are effective in reducing runoff, sediment and nutrient losses from agricultural fields. Practices evaluated and indicated to be effective include grassed waterways, contour buffer strips, filter strips, terraces, stream bank stabilization, and riparian forest buffers.