There were 25 watershed projects in Iowa assessed to identify key characteristics of successful projects. See the Watershed Status page for a summary of the findings.
Participating watershed projects met the following criteria:
- Local project at the HUC-12 or HUC-10 watershed scale
- Project focused on agricultural land and associated soil and water conservation practices
- Active project with current funding from state and/or federal programs
Watershed projects were assessed through a survey and interviews with watershed project coordinators. Insights from each project were synthesized and used to assign a rating in six overall categories to capture various project characteristics:
- Success: Stakeholder awareness, stakeholder commitment and trajectory
- Enabling Conditions: Few constraints to in-field and edge-of-field practice adoption
- Leadership: Project coordinator experience and time commitment, farmer leadership and watershed plan quality
- Community: Culture of collaboration within the watershed
- Financial Assistance: Adequacy of financial resources to support practice implementation
- Technical Assistance: Adequacy of technical assistance to meet stakeholder needs
Results with these categories for each watershed project were used to illustrate intra-project strengths and weaknesses, so the watershed status charts should not be used to compare projects. The Watershed Status page summarizes the current status of each assessed project.