This page provides technical information about management practices that farmers and ranchers can use to prevent the loss of sediments, nutrients, and pesticides from working lands. Technical guidance is also provided on techniques to assess the effectiveness of your management practices and discover if your land is a source of water quality pollution.

Watersheds Link Us All
A watershed is defined as an area of land that water flows across or under on its way to a single body of water, such as a stream, river, or ocean. Water connects geology, plants, animals and humans as it flows across agricultural land into waterways and eventually to coastal estuaries and the ocean.In a properly functioning watershed, water is captured, stored and released by the soil thereby minimizing large flood events, recharging groundwater supplies and providing for plants and animals. As water flows over agricultural land, it may pick up and carry with it pollutants such as sediment, pesticides, nutrients.

Potential Effects of Agricultural Runoff
It is important that every landowner address these potential losses from their properties because even though each individual landowner may contribute relatively little, the cumulative effect on the watershed by many landowners can be quite damaging to water quality and the lives that the water supports.

Sediment
Excessive sediment in the waterways can smother underwater habitats and organisms, interfere with feeding, cover important fish spawning grounds (e.g. for steelhead and salmon) and fill wetland areas thus increasing flooding potential.

Pesticides
Sediment movement is also the main way that most persistent pesticides, such as DDT, are transported through a watershed. These older, more persistent pesticides can accumulate in aquatic organisms such as shellfish and their predators, which include seabirds, sea otters, and humans causing long and short-term health problems. Other currently used pesticides can be carried off farm with irrigation or rainfall runoff and cause toxicity to aquatic organisms.

Nutrients
Nutrient runoff from lawns, pastures and agricultural fields can lead to excessive growth of certain plants and algae, thereby decreasing biological diversity. The excessive growth can clog waterways and lead to a depletion of dissolved oxygen in the water, which can eventually lead to fish kills.

What You Can Do
Fortunately there are several water quality management practices that can be installed or applied by most farmers and ranchers to enhance and protect water quality while sustaining the economic viability of agriculture. The following sequence of water quality planning strategies can help you select management practices to make the most efficient use of your time and resources: Every property and production system is unique so management practices must be tailored to the circumstances.

For more detailed fact sheets on farm management practices that can protect water quality and why water quality protection matters, check out our Publications page. Other sites with information include:

NRCS website
Links to Electronic version of the NRCS Field Office Technical Guide, and lots of other great information.
http://www.nrcs.usda.gov/

NRCS Conservation Practice Lists for California:
http://efotg.nrcs.usda.gov/efotg_locator.aspx?map=CA

UCCE Water Quality Program Fact Sheets:
http://groups.ucanr.org/signup/Fact_Sheets/