Buffers and Vegetative Filter Strips

This chapter describes the use of buffers and vegetative filter strips relative to water quality. In particular, we primarily discuss the herbaceous components of the following NRCS Conservation Practice Standards: Filter Strip (393) Alley Cropping (311) Riparian Forest Buffer (391) Vegetative Barrier (601) Conservation Cover (327) Riparian Herbaceous Cover (390) Contour Buffer Strips (332) Grassed Waterway (412) Placement of most of these practices is illustrated in figure 4-1. Common purposes of these herbaceous components (as defined by the NRCS Conservation Practice Standards) are to: • Reduce the sediment, particulate organics, and sediment-adsorbed contaminant loadings in runoff. • Reduce dissolved contaminant loadings in runoff. • Serve as Zone 3 of a riparian forest buffer. • Reduce sediment, particulate organics, and sediment-adsorbed contaminant loadings in surface irrigation tailwater. • Restore, create, or enhance herbaceous habitat for wildlife and beneficial insects. • Maintain or enhance watershed functions and values. • Reduce sheet and rill erosion. • Convey runoff from terraces, diversions, or other water concentrations without causing erosion or flooding (grassed waterway). • Reduce gully erosion (grassed waterway and vegetative barrier). The term buffer is used here to generally refer to all eight practice standards noted above. These can be further identified as “edge-of-field” and “in-field” buffers consistent with the terminology used by Dabney et al. (2006). Edge-of-field buffers include filter strips, riparian forest buffers, and riparian herbaceous cover. In-field buffers include conservation cover, contour buffer strips, alley cropping, and grassed waterways. Vegetative barriers could be either in-field or edge-of-field buffers

Rehabilitation of an Incised Stream Using Plant Materials: the Dominance of Geomorphic Processes

The restoration of potentially species-rich stream ecosystems in physically unstable environments is challenging, and few attempts have been evaluated scientifically. Restoration approaches that involve living and dead native vegetation are attractive economically and from an ecological standpoint. A 2-km reach of an incised, sand-bed stream in northern Mississippi was treated with large wood structures and willow plantings to trigger responses that would result in increasing similarity with a lightly degraded reference stream. Experimental approaches for stream bank and gully stabilization were also examined. Although the project was initially successful in producing improved aquatic habitat, after 4 yr it had failed to effectively address issues related to flashy watershed hydrology and physical instability manifest by erosion and sedimentation. The success of ecosystem rehabilitation was thus governed by landscape-scale hydrological and geomorphological processes

Integrative Analysis Identifies Four Molecular and Clinical Subsets in Uveal Melanoma

Comprehensive multiplatform analysis of 80 uveal melanomas (UM) identifies four molecularly distinct, clinically relevant subtypes: two associated with poor-prognosis monosomy 3 (M3) and two with better prognosis disomy 3 (D3). We show that BAP1 loss follows M3 occurrence and correlates with a global DNA methylation state that is distinct from D3-UM. Poor-prognosis M3-UM divide into subsets with divergent genomic aberrations, transcriptional features, and clinical outcomes. We report change-of-function SRSF2 mutations. Within D3-UM, ElF1AX- and SRSF2/SF3B/-mutant tumors have distinct somatic copy number alterations and DNA methylation profiles, providing insight into the biology of these low- versus intermediate -risk clinical mutation subtypes