Excerpt
SECTION 208 of the Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendments requires planning agencies to formulate means by which agricultural nonpoint pollution sources can be identified and to set forth methods for the control of such sources. Devising best management practices for nonpoint pollution control necessitates evaluation of alternative strategies—determining the location, spatial distribution, and acreage affected by nonpoint pollution problems (3).
With the use of a geographic information system, planners can correlate landcover and topographic data with a variety of environmental parameters relating to such indicators as surface runoff, drainage basin acreage, and terrain configuration. This approach permits water quality data from various sources to be integrated into a comprehensive system capable of combining and cross referencing such diverse data elements as conventional maps. Landsat imagery, and tabular data obtained “on the ground.” Environmental planners thus can visualize disparate data elements that otherwise must examined manually.
Computer-based information can also be used to refine such models as the universal soil loss equation. The result is reasonable predictions of agricultural pollutant loads and the potential ...
Footnotes
Stephen J. Walsh is an associate professor of geography and director of the Center for Applications of Remote Sensing, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, Oklahoma 74078.
- Copyright 1985 by the Soil and Water Conservation Society
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