UI Paradise Creek Project One of Four Nationwide to Assess Conservation Measures

MOSCOW, Idaho - The U.S. Department of Agriculture recently awarded the University of Idaho a $640,000 grant to study the effectiveness of conservation practices along Paradise Creek, which runs near Moscow and the UI campus. The UI College of Agricultural and Life Sciences project led by researcher Jan Boll is one of four awarded nationally to assess the performance of water quality improvement projects.

Boll and his research team will use new and existing data to study the effectiveness of conservation practices along the stream. The study will also consider how watershed restoration efforts can be made most efficient. Boll's award is part of the USDA's $2.5 million national Conservation Effects Assessment Project. This project probes why conservation practices may not yield immediate water quality improvements.

An environmental water quality engineer, Boll has focused on Paradise Creek since receiving a prestigious early career development award in 2000 from the National Science Foundation to study the stream. He currently is an associate professor of biological and agricultural engineering. Boll established a network of stream monitoring stations and a volunteer climate network throughout the Paradise Creek watershed as part of that work. Landowners along the stream helped the study by allowing monitoring stations and weather stations on their properties.

Restoration efforts evaluated in the new project include gully plugs, reduced or zero tillage and stream improvements such as shoring up banks to slow erosion and tree and shrub plantings. The new UI study will focus specifically on the effects of land management on suspended solids and sediment entering the stream. The new project will determine the effectiveness of conservation practices with emphasis on statistical analysis of existing monitoring data, geo-spatial modeling and integrated physical and socioeconomic analysis, Boll wrote.

"We also want to look at the effectiveness of monitoring water quality," Boll said. "It may take longer than anticipated for measures to work. We also want to look at where to locate the conservation practices to have the greatest effect," he said. "Paradise Creek is an ideal location for the work because more than 25 years of existing data show stream conditions before and after the major stream improvement efforts, Boll said.

In addition to physical water quality measurements, the study will survey landowners and others about their perceptions and examine the economic impacts of the stream improvement project. Other investigators on the grant are J.D. Wulfhorst and Murat Isik, both assistant professors in the college's Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology Department, and Bob Mahler, professor and extension water quality coordinator in the college's Plant, Soil and Entomological Sciences Department.

"An exciting part of the project includes the coordination and sharing of all sorts of data collected in Paradise Creek Watershed over the years by different entities," Boll said. The Palouse Clearwater Environmental Institute will assist that effort.

-30-BL-10/15/2004-AG October 15, 2004 Contacts: Jan Boll, associate professor of biological and agricultural engineering, (208) 885-7324, jboll@uidaho.edu; or Bill Loftus, UI science writer, (208) 885-7694, bloftus@uidaho.edu