Monitoring the Effectiveness of Conservation Practices in Small Agricultural Watersheds

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By Chesapeake Bay Activities April 2, 2024

Farmers are an important part of the economy and heritage of the Chesapeake Bay. Farmers also act as stewards of the land and water. Across the Chesapeake Bay Watershed, members of the agricultural community are volunteering to adopt conservation practices on their land. The goal of these practices is to protect the health of the soil, local streams and rivers, and the Chesapeake Bay. These practices can reduce nutrients and sediment loss, but measuring their cumulative effectiveness is difficult, especially in large watersheds. Researchers are more likely to be able to detect the effects of conservation practices in small watersheds where these practices are widely used.

In order to close this gap in the research, federal and state scientists are working together to monitor five watersheds in Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, and Pennsylvania.

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Project Overview

A map of the Chesapeake Bay watershed showing the location of five monitoring sites.

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The Chesapeake Bay is fed by over 100,000 rivers, streams, and other waterways across its massive 64,000 square mile watershed. Approximately one third of the land within the Chesapeake Bay watershed is used for agriculture. Many farmers across the watershed are volunteering to use conservation on their land. These practices can help achieve cleaner water in rivers, streams, and in the groundwater by limiting the amount of nutrients and sediment in local waters. These practices include:

Cover crops
Nutrient management plans
Tillage practices
Livestock exclusion fencing
Animal waste management systems
and more

It’s difficult to measure how effective all of these different practices are at a large scale. Most long-term water-quality studies in the Chesapeake focus on large watersheds, but it may be easier to detect conservation-practice effects in small watersheds. Therefore, more data from small agricultural watersheds are needed to help scientists make better water-quality predictions and to support the conservation work of farmers and their communities.

To address this need, a Federal Water Quality Monitoring Team recommended that small Chesapeake Bay watersheds with 'extensive implementation of conservation practices' be monitored. The USGS is working with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), and many local partners to monitor five such streams. This work is an opportunity to highlight the conservation efforts by local farmers through the use of water-quality monitoring. Partnerships with those who live and work within these small watersheds is key. We can measure what is happening in the local streams, but we need cooperation from local partners to put that data into perspective and help us understand the story our data is telling us.

The goals of this work are to:

Understand how conservation practices impact water quality at the small watershed scale.
Develop new insights about the sources and drivers of nutrients and sediment in agricultural streams.
Engage local communities, including educate the public about how conservation efforts affect water quality.

This work will also help Chesapeake Bay scientists and stakeholders work towards answering the following Priority Stakeholder Questions:

Site Descriptions

Five small agricultural watersheds were selected for this study. They range in size from about 5 to 13 square miles. Each watershed has strong conservation partnerships and represents agricultural settings that are common to the Chesapeake Bay watershed.

The following parameters are collected at each site:

Streamflow
Dissolved oxygen
Nitrate plus nitrite
pH
Specific conductance
Temperature
Turbidity

These parameters will be used to develop near real time estimates of loads to better monitor water quality progress.

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Hammer Creek

Hammer Creek is a 13 square mile watershed in Lebanon County, Pennsylvania. It has a mixture of cropland and animal-raising activities.

Stream monitiring data for Hammer Creek can be viewed here.

Data collection by the USGS and the Susquehana River Basin Commission began at Hammer Creek on November 29, 2023.

The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection has developed a restoration plan for Hammer Creek that is designed to reduce sediment loads. That plan can be viewed here.

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Little Conewago Creek

Little Conewago Creek is a 5 square mile watershed in Lebanon County, Pennsylvania. Like Hammer Creek, it has a mixture of animal and crop agricultural activities.

Stream monitoring data for Little Conewago can be viewed here.

Data collection by the USGS, Penn State, and the USDA Agricultural Research Service began at Little Conewago Creek on December 6, 2023.

The Little Conewago Creek monitoring station is nested within the larger Conewago Creek watershed. The USGS operates two additional monitoring stations in the Conewago Creek watershed: Conewago Creek at Bellaire and Conewago Creek at Falmouth. Comparing the monitoring data across these three stations may provide new water-quality insights.

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War Branch

War Branch is an 11 square mile watershed in Rockingham County, Virginia with mostly poultry and beef agricultural activities. War Branch, like many creeks in the region, includes streamflow from a natural spring.

Stream monitoring data from War Branch can be viewed here.

Data collection by the USGS began at Little Conewago Creek on May 2, 2024.

War Branch is part of the Smith Creek watershed. Additional conservation practices are planned for War Branch, as Smith Creek is part of the NRCS National Water-Quality Initiative and is a showcase project area.

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Bucks Branch

Bucks Branch is a 7 square mile watershed in Sussex County, Delaware with mostly poultry and row-crop agricultural activities.

Stream monitoring data from Bucks Branch can be viewed here.

Data collection by the USGS began at Bucks Branch on May 29, 2024.

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Sams Creek

Sams Creek is an 11 square mile watershed which sits in both Frederick and Carrol counties in Maryland. This watershed has a mixture of cattle and cropping practices.

The Sams Creek stream monitoring station will be installed later this year.

Sams Creek drains to Little Pipe Creek, which drains to the Monocacy and finally the Potomac River. Little Pipe Creek is a newly selected National Water Quality Initiative location for the NRCS. As such, Sams Creek will be a focal point for future conservation practice adoption.

Partnership Opportunities

This work depends on a strong partnership among researchers, conservationists, and the local communities that live and work in these small watersheds. This partnership is needed to implement and maintain conservation practices, describe agricultural activities, and interpret stream monitoring data.

If you’d like to learn more about the work in these watersheds or join the collaborative team, please reach out to us: