Conservation buffers are a widely used best management practice for reducing agricultural nonpoint source pollution. Various governmental programs and community initiatives have been implemented to adopt conservation buffers for water quality improvement. Since there is substantial cost for installing conservation buffers in watersheds, cost-effectiveness would be improved by targeting buffers to locations where they would produce greater benefit and to avoid locations where the benefit would be low. There are two comprehensive watershed planning approach being developed to prioritize the conservation buffer placement in watersheds to achieve greater environmental effectiveness and cost-effectiveness. Terrain analysis evaluates topographic attributes in relation to agricultural source areas to identify locations where runoff loadings would be relatively greater for conservation buffer placement. Alternatively, soil surveys are evaluated to identify soil map units where slope, soil, and water table attributes present relatively better conditions for trapping pollutants in runoff from agricultural areas. In this study, these two different methods are compared to determine the degree of correspondence of prioritized locations and to evaluate the relative strengths and weakness of each method. The case study area is the 31 mi2 Neshanic River watershed in New Jersey.
