"The Wisconsin Buffer Initiative" will be presented at this week's Iowa
State University Sustainable Agriculture Colloquium by Dr. Pete Nowak,
Rural Sociologist, University of Wisconsin - Madison

This Wednesday, Oct. 3, 3:10 - 4:30 pm in 1204 Kildee Hall (The Ensminger
Room) on the ISU campus

The Wisconsin Buffer Initiative was a collaborative effort between a
diverse group of Wisconsin citizens and UW-Madison scientists to develop
recommendations for the Wisconsin DNR on how riparian buffers can be part
of a larger conservation system to address agricultural nonpoint source
pollution. Rather than simply coming up with a fixed standard that would
be uniformly applied across the diversity of Wisconsin's agricultural
landscapes, the collaboration developed an innovative approach that
identified site-specific areas where buffers, as part of a larger
conservation system, would have the greatest likelihood of reducing
pollution in waters that would benefit the most from this reduction. The
WBI collaboration developed this science-based approach as it promises to
be more efficient (i.e., water quality gains per dollar invested of public
funds) and effective (i.e., the goal is to enhance water quality and not
just install practices) than the approaches used in other water quality
programs. How these goals were developed, the final recommendations on
this science-based approach, and how they are being implemented will be
discussed by Dr. Nowak, the project's chair.