TY - JOUR T1 - Quantifying conservation JF - Journal of Soil and Water Conservation SP - 136A LP - 136A VL - 57 IS - 6 AU - Craig Cox Y1 - 2002/11/01 UR - http://www.jswconline.org/content/57/6/136A.abstract N2 - Think for a minute about where we'd be without USLE or RUSLE. These tools have enabled us to quantify the risk of erosion under different management, in different landscapes, and on different soils. Conservationists using USLE or RUSLE, can present landowners and managers with a suite of options for their consideration—and all of those options can be evaluated using a consistent and common tool across the landscape. Using T, the concept of soil loss tolerance, along with RUSLE, gives quantitative answers to questions like, ‘How do we know how much risk reduction is good enough?' or ‘How much damage is just too much?’ Don't get me wrong. I'm aware of the limitations of USLE, RUSLE, and T. But despite their limitations, they have provided conservationists a quantitative tool with which to compare conservation systems and a consistent standard against which to measure the performance of those systems. This is on my mind because people have been raising this issue with me lately in different ways. I've talked with scientists, practitioners, program managers, budget officials, and policymakers. They all say the same thing. We need … ER -