The U.S. Department of Agriculture Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) provides funding and technical assistance for the implementation of practices that enable people to conserve, maintain, or improve soil, water, and related natural resources. NRCS conservation practices, or best management practices, relate the conservation practices to conservation practice physical effects (CPPE). Physical effects are listed in the data and purpose and include effects such as nutrients and pesticides transported to surface and/or groundwater. The CPPE is published in the NRCS Field Office Technical Guide and is listed in the sources section. NRCS's CPPE includes a limited set of practices. All practices that do not have an NRCS-assigned CPPE were evaluated using NRCS practice standard criteria and required enhancements to determine the most comparable practice that with an assigned CPPE. The CPPE categories are ranked on a scale of -5 to +5. These rankings are categorical and indicate a range from substantial worsening (-5) to substantial improvement (+5) with zero indicating no effect. NRCS conservation practice data are available to USGS researchers via a data sharing agreement.
