Agricultural Conservation Planning Framework: 3. Land Use and Field Boundary Database Development and Structure

Conservation planning information is important for identifying options for watershed water quality improvement and can be developed for use at field, farm, and watershed scales. Translation across scales is a key issue impeding progress at watershed scales because watershed improvement goals must be connected with implementation of farm‐ and field‐level conservation practices to demonstrate success. This is particularly true when examining alternatives for “trap and treat” practices implemented at agricultural‐field edges to control (or influence) water flows through fields, landscapes, and riparian corridors within agricultural watersheds. We propose that database structures used in developing conservation planning information can achieve translation across conservation‐planning scales, and we developed the Agricultural Conservation Planning Framework (ACPF) to enable practical planning applications. The ACPF comprises a planning concept, a database to facilitate field‐level and watershed‐scale analyses, and an ArcGIS toolbox with Python scripts to identify specific options for placement of conservation practices. This paper appends two prior publications and describes the structure of the ACPF database, which contains land use, crop history, and soils information and is available for download for 6091 HUC12 watersheds located across Iowa, Illinois, Minnesota, and parts of Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, and Wisconsin and comprises information on 2.74 × 10⁶ agricultural fields (available through http://northcentralwater.org/acpf/). Sample results examining land use trends across Iowa and Illinois are presented here to demonstrate potential uses of the database. While designed for use with the ACPF toolbox, users are welcome to use the ACPF watershed data in a variety of planning and modeling approaches. CORE IDEAS: Water quality improvement must meet watershed goals through farm‐level measures. Planning data can help better connect farm implementation and watershed outcomes. We developed a database to help develop watershed plans through farm‐level options. The database is available for >6000 HUC12 watersheds in the US Midwest.