Conservation Based Approach for Assessing Public Drainage Benefits

摘要: Agricultural drainage provides an essential service to farmers and producers across the Midwest. However, maintenance and improvements of the drainage system are very costly. Landowners are charged via taxation based on the amount of benefits they receive from the drainage system. Currently in Minnesota, benefits are determined by professional ditch viewers. Little guidance is provided to them by the drainage code and the process is highly laborious. Benefits are currently assigned per parcel based on discrete benefit classes. Professional judgment is an inherent component of the assessment. The main focus of this project is to investigate potential methods to improve on the current practices. The project is particularly interested in exploring the usefulness of geographic and hydrologic modeling software to automate the process, to objectively identify benefits, and to incorporate conservation practices in assessments. Alternative methods are not expected to fully replace field assessments by certified viewers. They would be used in conjunction with these assessments. Alternative methods were evaluated using a representative agricultural watershed in Martin County (JD4).Geographic information systems (GIS) are widely used in the management of natural resources to visualize landscape attributes and processes. These tools were used extensively in the project. One of the applications utilized compared the current Minnesota method used to assess benefits with that of Ohio. The Ohio method is similar to the Minnesota method in that it does not use hydrologic models to assess benefits. To evaluate the current methodology, benefits …