The Big Green Lake watershed (Green Lake, Wisconsin) is dominated by agriculture with only 3% developed land use. In 2014, Big Green Lake was listed as impaired for low dissolved oxygen caused by total phosphorus loading. Public and non-profit lake management partners have been aggressively implementing agricultural best management practices (BMPs) in the Big Green Lake watershed to address these phosphorus concerns. While these practices are beneficial for nutrient reductions, the scale and location of these efforts so far have not been directly associated with water quality goals. This presentation focuses on a social science assessment that is being integrated into the development of a phosphorus prioritization model in the watershed to guide targeted BMP decision-making. As success of these efforts will ultimately rely on voluntary landowner participation on private property it is important that the model is informed by both social and ecological prioritization data. This project utilizes a farmer survey, sent to 459 landowners within the Big Green Lake watershed that received a 40.1% response rate, to develop a social profile of agricultural landowners to understand attitude, behavior, and demographic factors influencing adoption of conservation practices that support watershed management.
Results/Conclusions
The attitude and demographic data collected in the survey is analyzed using factor and cluster analysis techniques to segment landowners into groups distinguished by attitudes toward environmental stewardship and farm type. Further analysis of the resulting six landowner types revealed significant differences exist for experience, interest, and perceived benefit of 13 conservation practices proposed for water quality protection. To use these typologies to inform the prioritization model survey respondents were asked to identify on a map the location that best describes the area where they actively farm, or own farmland, within the Green Lake watershed. This volunteered information was then used to group survey respondents into 7 geographic clusters within the watershed, while maintaining individual respondent confidentiality. The result is an attitude profile documenting dominant landowner types within geographic reaches of the watershed that can be used to inform conservation outreach activities.