Landowner Advocate Advancing Conservation

Surveys show many absentee landowners have a high interest in conservation, but lack the information or confidence they need to make decisions to improve natural resources on the land they own.

That’s why Agren, Inc. is experimenting with a “landowner advocate” position in two counties in Michigan as part of a larger effort to reach out to absentee landowners.
“Field offices are busy working with the people who have already expressed an interest in conservation. It takes extra time to work with people new to conservation, and to explain all the details. If you’re an absentee landowner and new to conservation, you may be intimidated and fall out of the system,” says Tom Buman, Agren president.
The landowner advocate position set up in Arenac and Tuscola County Soil Conservation Districts for a year is intended to introduce new people to conservation, give them extra consulting time, and make them comfortable with conservation.

“Then we step back,” Buman says.

The idea came from Jamie Ridgely, co-owner and lead project manager for Agren. She likens the landowner advocate to a patient advocate in a hospital––a person who can walk the customer through the conservation process step by step, offering answers to questions and giving guidance as needed.

The Arenac and Tuscola County advocate position is funded by a grant to the Missouri and Mississippi Divide Resource Conservation and Development (RC&D) from the Great Lakes Protection Funds.
Kevin Wilson, a part-time conservationist with the Arenac County Soil Conservation District who has spent most of his time working with local landowners on conservation improvements, will double as the landowner advocate. “It’s still new for me, but I definitely see a need for this,” Wilson says. “It’s the only thing going to get new people in contact with the soil conservation district. I think we will find that most of these people are not agricultural producers, but they have forest land that could be improved, and they may want food plots or other improvements for wildlife.”

Wilson believes absentee landowners will need more time and explanation of conservation programs than the active local landowners he deals with most of the time. “Most people I’ve dealt with in the past hear about conservation programs from neighbors, but that isn’t the case with absentee landowners. It’s going to take more effort to keep them informed,” Wilson says.
Wilson’s double duty will likely include working non-traditional hours––nights and weekends––Buman says, to meet schedules of absentee landowners.

Agren and Wilson set up coffee shop, one-on-one meetings at half a dozen locations for local absentee landowners (a high percentage of people who live away from the land they own are within a short drive, Agren surveys show) to visit about conservation possibilities in a relaxed setting. They also offer telephone consultations for long distance owners.

Success of the one-year project will be measured, Buman says. “We will track how many people have been motivated to ask for more information, implement conservation, or moved along in the conservation process,” Buman says. He doesn’t know of anywhere the idea has been tried, and hopes to use a landowner advocate in other projects.

Precision slope length and steepness coming to RUSLE2

Precision farming, with foot-by-foot fertilizer application, has made marked improvements in accuracy towards matching fertilizers to changing crop needs across a field.

Now, that same kind of precision is poised for use in the computer model that estimates soil losses.

Agren is making progress on a three-year project to refine slope calculations in the Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation, Version 2, commonly known as RUSLE2. The project is in cooperation with the USDA National Soil Tilth Laboratory and the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship, Division of Soil Conservation.

“We’re developing an on-line, GIS-based RUSLE2 calculator that will be more accurate and more efficient in predicting sheet and rill erosion,” says Tom Buman, Agren president.

“Slope length and slope steepness are very important factors in current RUSLE2 models. However, measuring length and steepness of every slope in the field is time-prohibitive and rarely done,” explains Buman. “So it's typical now for conservation planners to use averages for slope length and steepness that don’t give the accuracy we really need.”

The key to accuracy in the new tool will be integration of high-resolution digital elevation models (DEMs) derived from Light Detection And Ranging (LiDAR) remote sensing data. A 3-meter by 3-meter resolution will calculate and recalculate slope length and steepness as you move down the slope, Buman explains. The final product will be a GIS-based map with predicted soil losses.

“Our goal long-term is to enable landowners to go online to figure their own soil losses under various scenarios, with different cropping patterns and tillage techniques, so they can immediately see the resulting differences in soil erosion,” Buman says.
Along with improved accuracy, Agren is making the interface more intuitive and easier to use. Plans are to test the GIS-based RUSLE2 template with conservation planners in four Iowa watersheds in early 2010.

Until recently, LiDAR was not available; several Iowa agencies partnered to begin acquiring statewide LiDAR coverage in 2006. Now, more than half the state of Iowa has LiDAR coverage.

Agren is coordinating research and work among several partners including Dr. Daniel Yoder, University of Tennessee; Dr. Chris Renschler, University at Buffalo; Dr. Seth Dabney, USDA National Sedimentation Laboratory; Dave Lightle, USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service; and Marcus Tooze, GIS Workshop.

Proposed caption:
Counties with LiDAR coverage shown in green.

“The pond builder is designed to quickly give conservation planners and landowners accurate information for decision-making,” says Stan Buman, Agren vice president. “Right now, because of workloads and work schedules, it might take a field office 2 months to get to a site to do preliminary surveys, then more time back in the office to make the calculations for sizes and costs. This program helps conservationists quickly come up with a ballpark figure for costs that helps a landowner make a decision without waiting for months. It also saves time for everyone when the landowner can make a decision based on just a few entries into the computer.”
There’s no other program like it. The program relies on new LiDAR (Light Detection And Ranging) elevation data being made available by the Iowa Department of Natural Resources and other agencies.

“We’ve really tried to make this program user-friendly,” says Bob Buman, a development analyst (Ph.D. in agronomy) who developed the use-case diagrams for the software. “The user doesn’t really have to know much about design. The program picks pipe size, dam height and length, and other design elements based on the size and location you’ve chosen for the pond. Cost estimates for components such as seeding are already plugged in, too.” Tom Buman adds that you need only a computer with a high speed internet connection to run the web-based GIS program if you are planning a pond in a county that has LiDAR elevations and pond builder information already loaded online.

More than half the state now has LiDAR elevation coverage; the expectation is to have it available in all counties.
Agren has asked conservationists with the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) and the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship (IDALS) to test the pond builder in Ringgold, Union, Fayette and Winneshiek Counties.

Glee Mobley, a conservation technician with IDALS in the Mt. Ayr field office, has used the program to estimate more than 50 ponds this year and has tested the program’s accuracy, speed, and ease of use. “The program is slick, fast, and simple,” Mobley says. He says he loves the program and hopes the office can continue to use it. After training and multiple uses, he says it’s taking him only 5 to 6 minutes per pond. When he checked one pond against figures obtained with survey data and Hydro-Yardage, he said the pond builder program was within 90 percent accuracy. Glee, a technician who admits he tries to stay away from computers when possible, says the program also makes developing cost-share estimates much easier for both the farmer and the field office.

After testing is complete, the pond builder will be accessible to NRCS and IDALS in the four test counties. Decisions haven’t been made on how to expand use to all counties with LiDAR data available.

The pond builder could be applied to other states with LiDAR availability––North Carolina and Pennsylvania have some coverage––but the program needs to be adapted for those state’s soils, engineering standards, and other inputs.

Agren is also developing a similar program for water and sediment control basins, which will be ready for testing in August. A third program in development is one to calculate runoff curve numbers. The company is also applying for a grant to develop planning software for grassed waterways, terraces, buffer strips and other conservation practices.

Agren is committed to disseminating the results of the projects that we work on. The following is a list of the places we have
presented and exhibited during the last six months.

• National Association of Conservation Districts (NACD) Annual Conference/New Orleans, LA (Exhibitor)
• Iowa Agriculture and Environment Conference/Ames, IA (Exhibitor)
• NRCS State Resource Conservationist’s Meeting/Atlanta, GA (Presenter)
• Iowa Volunteer Fire Department Chief’s Workshop/Ames, IA (Presenter)
• Conservation Districts of Iowa Annual Conference/Ames, IA (Presenter)