UNIVERSITY PARK (Centre Co.) Researchers at Penn State arc using Geographic Information Systems to rank areas in Pennsyl vania by their potential for produc ing nonpoint source pollution. “The rankings developed by this project will be used to identify crit ical watersheds in Pennsylvania that have the greatest agricultural nonpoint source pollution poten tial, and where the maximum water quality benefits from implementation of mitigation programs are possible,” said Eh - . James M. Hamlett, assistant pro fessor of agricultural and biologi cal engineering. ‘The information can then be used to guide future nutrient management programs and allocations for the State Non pomt Source Management RAIN GAUGES I la i I i rV M*r FOR UNDER I I j*\ THE TREE I \ v ORIN i I ™E. STOCKING | 9 11" Official • All Weather ? 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CITY GIFT CARD TO READ FROM 8 1 System Pinpoints Nonpoint Source Pollution Program.” Identifiable and locatable pollu tion sources, such as factories with effluent streams or sulfur dioxide releasing smokestacks, are consid ered point source polluters. Pollu tion caused by runoff from agricul tural land, suburban areas, and forests is classified nonpoint sour ce because no individual site is the cause of the problem. “Most of the information we needed for this project was already available, but we had to key it to geographic location and build up the individual layers to see the whole picture,” said Hamlett. Geographic Information Sys tems manipulate information both visually and numerically. They can incorporate information from various layers and visually show $32.00 $8.75 $5.70 7/.v . \ CRIPTION TO or Am LANCASTER FARMING P.O. BOX 609 EPHRATA, PA 17522 Subscriptions Will Begin With Christmas Issue NEW RENEWAL STATE COUNTY the results on a map, The researchers created seven layers for this project. The first layer, the boundaries of the 104 watersheds, was adopted from the Slate Water Plan of the Pennsylva nia Bureau of Water Resources Management. The next level, land use, was accessed from the U.S. Geological Survey’s (USGS) Land Use Data Analysis program. “This land use data did not dif ferentiate between crop land and pasture,” said Hamlett. “We arbi trarily set everything on a slope of less than 1 percent and greater than IS percent as pasture and left the rest as crop land.” A third layer indicated the topo graphy and was also drawn from USGS data. Soil information from the Soil Conservation Service’s State Soil Geographic Data Base made up the fourth layer. The animal density, used to determine nitrogen loading from manure, was taken from the U.S. Census Bureau for 1987 and made <1 W Coupon To: ill Thl! up the fifth layer. “This data set caused a slight problem because it was organized by zip code, while the other data sets were provided by county or watershed,” said Hamlett. “We had to do some matching of zip codes to watersheds to make this layer work with the others.” The final two layers, precipita tion and rainfall-runoff factor, were developed by ZedX Inc., a commercial firm specializing in databases for agricultural decision making. The precipitation layer was a combination of 24-hour and monthly precipitation information. The rainfall-runoff factor, or the erosion index layer, was derived from average annual and regional cumulative erosion indices. To rank the watersheds, the team used four indices—the Sedi ment Production Index, which assesses erosion and sediment delivery to streams; the Runoff Index, which predicts potential to produce surface runoff; the Ani mal Loading liidex. which ranks potential manure nitrogen produc tion from livestock; and the Chem ical Use Index, which ranks poten tial for pollution from commercial chemical applications to agricul tural land. Each of these indices was derived from a combination of CIS information. The Animal Loading Index, for example, comes from the animal density layer, number and type of animals and, the expected manure production spread over the watershed. In each of the 104 watersheds, these four indices were weighted either for all land or only agricul tural land and added together to produce the Agricultural Pollution Potential index. The watersheds were then ranked. n&uoirs *P|a|gsGS A AGGRESSOR The Aggressive, High*Yielding Way To Fight Aphanomyces. • Specially bred for resistance to Aphanomyces and Phytophthora root rot. • Similar to Apollo Supreme in yields and protein content. • Excellent winterhardiness. P. L BOHRER & PRO., INC. Smoketown, PA ABI PO Bo* Shawnee Mission K 566201 I'S Plant Variety Protection granted or apphtdfor ABI allalfj varieties Unauthorized reproduction or ole ot ABI alfalfa varieties which are prates led by the U S Plant Variety Protection Act Public Lai* 9M77 is sirntls prohibited Violators may be prosecuted l**9o ABI nt2*»7 _ Lancaster Farming Saturday, December 14,1991-D3 “Looking at the rankings, its not surprising to find the number 1 and 2 watersheds in the Lancaster area,” said Hamlett. ‘These are intense agricultural areas with high animal populations. “In some other cases, we may have a high ranking because the topography is incredibly steep, producing large amounts of runoff and sediment, even if there are no animals and little nitrogen or pho sphorous loading.” Results of this one-year study were presented to the Pennsylvani a Department of Environmental Resources. The GIS layers deve loped for the project at Penn State’s Office for Remote Sensing of Earth Resources can be used for other studies and additional layers can be added to answer other questions. The research team included Hamlett; Dr. Gary W. Petersen, professor of soil genesis and mor phology and co-director of ORSER; George M. Baumcr and Douglas A. Miller, research assis tants, ORSER; Rick L. Day, department of agronomy; and Joseph M. Russo, research scien tist, ZedX, Inc. The team plans to use data collected in the Susque hanna basin to verify the informa tion generated using the GIS. They will compare the watershed rank ings determined by actual values to those determined by the GIS and verify that the rankings match. Hamlett believes there are improvements and additions that can be made to the program. “We were asked to do agricul tural land assessment, so we really didn’t consider urban land and its runoff and nonpoint source pollu tion potentials,” he said. “We also did not consider runoff from acid mine drainage throughout the state.” Call Today! PH. 717-299-2571 ONE OF AMERICA’S.
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