USDA Conservation Effects Survey to Have Des Moines River Basin Focus

The U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) 2012 National Resources Inventory (NRI) – Conservation Effects Assessment Project (CEAP) survey will focus on a Mississippi River Basin nutrient loading "hot spot," collecting information from agricultural producers in the Des Moines River Basin (Iowa and Minnesota) about farming and conservation practices on cultivated cropland (it also collected information in the Western Lake Erie Basin). The Des Moines River Basin effort will specifically look at the Basin's Boone River and Raccoon River subwatersheds, which were identified as particularly problematic from a nutrient loading standpoint in a July 2012 Upper Mississippi River Basin report. National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) representatives will visit 956 farms in the Des Moines River Basin (with a Boone and Raccoon watershed focus), from August 2012 through January 2013, to collect information about on-farm conservation practices. The information from the project will be used by the USDA to obtain a "current accounting of the environmental impacts of conservation practices in these areas," according to the NASS.

For more on the NRI CEAP project, see this USDA web site.