A web-accessible watershed-based system target's land areas at highest risk for sediment loss to streams

Sediment loadings continue to pose a major threat to water quality throughout the nation’s waterways and in particular the Great Lakes region. With this new watershed-based system, high-risk sediment loading areas may now be targeted down to the field level. The system estimates sediment loadings to Great Lakes Basin Rivers and streams based on estimates of erosion and sediment transport from agricultural lands. High Impact Targeting (HIT) utilizes sophisticated geospatial models to estimate sediment loadings with a high degree of resolution. The approach can be used from a watershed-level scale on down to the field level for precise identification of high-risk areas. The approach integrates three spatially-explicit components: (1) An estimate of the percentage of eroded soil that ends up in nearby streams is obtained from the Spatially-Explicit Delivery Model (SEDMOD); (2) The actual annual volume (in tons/acre/year) of eroded soil is obtained from the Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation (RUSLE); and (3) The annual volume of sediment transported to nearby streams is obtained by combining the results of SEDMOD and RUSLE. This information can be utilized by soil conservation managers to prioritize strategies/practices to reduce pollution of nearby streams.