Long-term evaluation of regional erosion control

Excerpt

Increasingly, all levels of government are being held to higher levels of accountability. Citizens and their representatives are insisting that public expenditures on conservation practices produce measurable benefits. For example, a major objective of an ongoing US program, the Conservation Effects Assessment Project, is to measure the effects of conservation practices at the watershed scale.

Society currently directs significant resources toward goals of watershed and stream channel management and, more specifically, toward control of erosion in incising channels. Endeavors such as stream habitat restoration, soil conservation, water quality management, and channel erosion control require reductions in sediment yield. Despite the emphasis on in-field and edge-of-field conservation measures, most sediment leaving many watersheds originates in channel boundaries. The effectiveness of channel erosion control practices in reducing watershed sediment yield is difficult to estimate using currently available technology.

A previous federal program, the Demonstration Erosion Control project, has yielded data that may be helpful in this effort, particularly in areas plagued by channel incision such as portions of the Mississippi River valley with loessial soils (Simon and Rinaldi 2000). Under legislation passed in 1984, three federal agencies demonstrated erosion control measures in 16 watersheds in northern Mississippi. Watershed areas ranged from 22 …