Crops and Creeks Huron
Updated: December 2020
Since 2008, landowners of the Bayfield North Watersheds, a 40-square-kilometre area north of Bayfield, Ontario, have been working with the Ausable Bayfield Conservation Authority (ABCA) and other agricultural and environmental agencies to implement best management practices (BMPs) and monitor the effects of these practices on water quality at the field and watershed scales.
Ausable Bayfield Conservation would like to thank the many landowners and producers in the Bayfield North watersheds who have implemented many projects over more than 10 years, as well as some of the landowners in the Gully Creek Watershed who have helped with monitoring efforts. There are also many other partners, organizations and agencies who have helped with efforts during this project – please visit the links to their websites at the bottom of this page.
Summary of Findings
Gully Creek has been of particular interest and is an area of intense BMP implementation and monitoring efforts. In addition, research partners from the University of Guelph, led by Dr. Wanhong Yang, have developed a Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model, which is a hydrologic model that can be used to help determine the collective effect of the BMPs at a watershed scale.
The BMPs that have been evaluated over the past ten years include conservation tillage, cover crops, nutrient management, water and sediment control basins (WASCoBs or berms), and a grass filter strip.
Some of our main findings can be summarized in the following points:
- At the field scale, structural projects (such as WASCoBs and grass filter strips) seem to reduce pollutant transport, mainly for sediment and phosphorus (P);
- At the field scale, the effect of land management practices was harder to determine due to difficulties in collecting water. Due to these difficulties we had to rely on modelled results. The modelled results showed pollutant reductions related to cover crop adoption and conservation tillage practices;
- At the watershed scale, modelled results found that P reductions were relatively small due to the small scale of the BMP implementation;
- Watershed monitoring results show negligible reductions possibly due to the small scale of BMP implementation, the effects of conventional management practices, or potentially weather related variability; and
- Broad application of a systematic – 'avoid, control, trap and treat' – approach to BMP implementation have yielded more significant modelled reductions in P at the watershed scale.
Evaluation has helped to develop a broader awareness around the importance of cover crops, improved soil health, and a systematic approach to BMP implementation. Changes implemented across the watershed and across the landscape help to improve and protect Lake Huron.
Without your continued help, projects such as Crops and Creeks Huron would not be possible.
Thank you!
Project Partners
Our project partners include:
- Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs
- Ontario Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks
- Environment and Climate Change Canada
- Ontario Soil and Crop Improvement Association
- Huron County Federation of Agriculture
- University of Guelph
Reports
Please find our latest reports on the efforts in the Gully Creek watershed can be found at the following links (these are large PDF files between 2 MB and 3 MB in size). Files are available in alternate formats upon request. Contact Mari Veliz at mveliz@abca.ca for copies of any of these reports.:
2020
- A comparative evaluation of the continuous and event-based modelling approaches for identifying critical source areas for sediment and phosphorus losses, Narayan Kumar Shrestha, Ramesh P. Rudra, Prasad Daggupati, Pradeep K. Goel, Rituraj Shukla, in the Journal of Environmental Management, September 14, 2020. – 1 MB (Large) PDF file.
2019
- Streamflow Variability in Agricultural Watersheds that Provide Habitat for Redside Dace – (2 MB Large PDF file)
2018
- Environment and Climate Change Canada - Lake Huron Tributary Pollutant Load Synthesis
- OMAFRA – Approaches to Evaluate BMPs
- GLASI – Evaluating Agricultural BMP Effectiveness in Two Huron County Watersheds
2017
- Environment and Climate Change Canada - Lake Huron Tributary Pollutant Load Synthesis
- Environment and Climate Change Canada - Shoreline Catchment Prioritization Modelling Summary
- SWAT Modelling and Assessment of Agricultural BMPs in the Gully Creek Watershed
- North Gullies Berm Surface Inlet Monitoring Program
- Predicting the temporal variation of flow contributing areas using SWAT, in The Journal of Hydrology, 2017, 547 (2017) 375–386
- Actual versus environmentally recommended fertilizer application rates: Implications for water quality and policy - Jennifer E. Lesliea, Alfons Weersink, Wanhong Yang, Glenn Fox, (2017), pp. 109-120, in Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment 240. - 500 KB (Medium-sized) PDF file.
- An Open Source GIS-Based Decision Support System for Watershed Evaluation of Best Management Practices, by Hui Shao, Wanhong Yang, John Lindsay, Yongbo Liu, Zhiqiang Yu, and Anatoliy Oginskyy, in the Journal of the American Water Resources Association, April 13, 2017. – 600 KB (Large) PDF file.
2016
- OMAFRA – Evaluating Agricultural BMPs in a Huron County Watershed
- Environment Canada – Southeastern Lake Huron Tributary Water Quality Synthesis and Modelling
2015
2013 (WBBE Project)
- Watershed Based BMP Evaluation (WBBE) Huron Field-scale BMP Evaluation
- WBBE Huron Land Use and Land Management
- WBBE Huron SWAT Modelling
- WBBE Huron Water Quality Monitoring
- WBBE Huron Synthesis
Other Links
Grants and Technical Expertise
If you own an agricultural property, and are interested in implementing a BMP on your property, or would like more information on funding programs to help implement BMPs, please call Kate Monk at the ABCA by telephone – 519-235-2610, or toll-free 1-888-286-2610 or by e-mail at