TY - JOUR T1 - Nitrogen Trading Tool to facilitate water quality credit trading JF - Journal of Soil and Water Conservation SP - 44A LP - 45A DO - 10.2489/jswc.63.2.44A VL - 63 IS - 2 AU - Christoph M. Gross AU - Jorge A. Delgado AU - Shaun P. McKinney AU - Harbans Lal AU - Harris Cover AU - Marvin J. Shaffer Y1 - 2008/03/01 UR - http://www.jswconline.org/content/63/2/44A.abstract N2 - Markets for water quality and other ecosystem services are rapidly emerging across the country. One of the basic requirements that link buyers and sellers of ecosystem services is an agreed upon unit of trade and a way to measure it. The new Nitrogen Trading Tool (NTT) prototype provides a reliable, easy-to-use method of calculating nitrogen credits for water quality. The USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) developed the NTT in close cooperation with the USDA Agricultural Research Service's Soil Plant Nutrient Research Unit and the US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA), with input from states, land grant universities, environmental brokers, and NRCS Conservation Innovation Grant recipients. In addition, regulators that oversee and certify point to nonpoint water quality trades have helped to guide the content of the NTT output reports. Thus, the USEPA knows how the nitrogen credits are calculated and is cognizant of the conservation measures that generate the credits. Quantifying the loss mechanisms of nutrients such as nitrogen is difficult (Delgado 2002). The NTT couples the scientifically rigorous Nitrogen Loss and Environmental Assessment Package (NLEAP) model (Shaffer and Delgado 2001; Shaffer et al. 2008) with a userfriendly, Web-based interface to allow the producer to easily calculate nitrogen savings from … ER -