NRCS Agricultural Lands Water Balance Active

Executive Summary:
Keeping agricultural lands in grassland or in crop production may have a direct effect on the water
balance of these lands. During wetter periods, certain treatments of grasslands or cropped lands may
allow for greater transpiration of water during the growing season that may lead to reduced soil moisture
and improved soil structure, thus leading to improved water infiltration and water-holding capacity.
Improvements in soil water-holding capacity of different grasslands or cropped lands is often implied, but
the improvement in water storage is often not quantified. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), in
cooperation with the Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS), will gather field and remotely-
sensed data on precipitation, snowpack water equivalents, evapotranspiration (ET), and soil moisture on
adjacent grasslands, crop-production lands, and possible fallow lands to evaluate the effects of various
land-management practices on water-balance components.

Objective(s):
The main objective of the study is to characterize the growing-season water-balance components for
grassland and crop-production land practices using remote sensing, field monitoring, and modeling
techniques. Another objective is to quantify the effects of these various land practices on reducing soil-
water content and increasing potential soil-water storage for future snow melt or rainfall events.