Introduction

Our Goal

To provide leadership, scientific, and technical services to advance agriculture’s environmental performance in organized watersheds through applied evaluation and adaptive implementation.

Our Role

Provide or facilitate technical assistance in the areas of strategic and tactical assessment and planning, program and funding development, implementation, evaluation, and quality control for agricultural watersheds and water quality projects in Iowa; engage in outreach, replication, and consultation in other Upper Mississippi River Basin states as needs arise and resources permit.

Our Approach

Our data-driven approach is built on an understanding of the complexity of the land-water interface, the importance of addressing water quality issues in the context of hydrologic units — watersheds — and the uniqueness of each watershed. Beginning with baseline data collection and assessment of local resource concerns, we base our approach on the principles of adaptive management for continual improvement, applied evaluation at multiple scales employed in a feedback loop, local planning and targeting for results, a suite of integrated solutions tailored to each watershed, collaboration among stakeholders for coordinated resources and leadership, and involvement of a critical mass of farmers and landowners in each watershed with technical assistance provided to each where resources permit.