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CARD: Center for Agricultural and Rural Development

Resource and Environmental Policy

Faculty and researchers in Resource and Environmental Policy assess regional, national, and international policies affecting the environment. Research analysis focuses on the environmental impacts of U.S. agricultural policies, including U.S. farm bill legislation.

Highlights

CARD Gets Grants from U.S. EPA to Evaluate Water Quality Trading
Art Spratlin, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Region 7 (center left), shakes hands with Gerald Miller, ISU College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, after an announcement of $600,000 in grant funding to CARD-ISU from the EPA to evaluate land conservation practices and the effects on three Iowa watersheds. Philip Gassman, CARD (right of Miller), and Richard Leopold, Iowa Department of Natural Resources (left of Spratlin), were on hand for the announcement at Raccoon River Park in Des Moines on April 1. -More-

group photo

The Economic Value of Iowa's Natural Resources
Daniel Otto, Dan Monchuk, Kanlaya Jintanakul, and Catherine Kling
Department of Economics, ISU Extension, Center for Agricultural and Rural Development, College of Agriculture, and Iowa State University
Commissioned by the Sustainable Funding for Natural Resources Study Committee, Iowa General Assembly
December, 2007

Conservation Practices in Iowa: Historical Investments, Water Quality, and Gaps
Catherine Kling, Sergey Rabotyagov, Manoj Jha, Hongli Feng, Josh Parcel, Philip Gassman, and Todd Campbell
A Report to the Farm Bureau, Iowa Corn Growers Association, Iowa Soybean Association, and Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, July 22, 2007
Report without Appendices (63 pages; 1.65 MB)
Report with Appendices (171 pages; 3.77 MB)

The Soil and Water Assessment Tool: Historical Development, Applications, and Future Research Directions (pdf)
P.W. Gassman, M.R. Reyes, C.H. Green, and J.G. Arnold
Invited Paper Series, Transactions of the ASABE, Vol. 50, Number 4

The Cost of Clean Water: Assessing Agricultural Pollution Reduction at the Watershed Scale
Silvia Secchi, Philip Gassman, Manoj Jha, Lyubov Kurkalova, Hongli Feng, Todd Campbell, and Catherine Kling
Report on research supported by the Iowa Department of Natural Resources
July 2005

The Iowa Lakes Valuation Project: Summary and Findings from Year One is the first report of a four-year economic study on the value that Iowans place on their water resources. The trip data collected in the first year was used to estimate total Iowa household trips to each of the 132 lakes included in the study. View more results and lake data at the Iowa Lakes Web Site.

Recent Papers

Paradox for Agro-Environmental Land Policy, A
David A. Hennessy, Hongli Feng
October 2009 [09-WP 499]

Optimal Placement of Conservation Practices Using Genetic Algorithm with SWAT
Manoj Jha, Sergey Rabotyagov, Philip W. Gassman
July 2009 [09-WP 496]

Recent Presentations

November 2009
Effect of Potential Future Climate Change on Cost-Effective Nonpoint Source Pollution Reduction Strategies in the UMRB (ppt) 12.23 MB
Manoj Jha, Philip Gassman, Gene Takle, Catherine Kling, Sergey Rabotyagov
September 2009
Watershed Advisory Council First Meeting (ppt) 2.15 MB
Cathy Kling, Phil Gassman, and Manoj Jha
Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa