Little River Experimental Watershed, Tifton, Georgia, United States: A historical geographic database of conservation practice implementation

Abstract

The Little River Experimental Watershed located in the headwaters of the Upper Suwannee River basin is one of twelve national benchmark watersheds participating in the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Conservation Effects Assessment Project-Watershed Assessment Studies (CEAP-WAS). Historical paper files and maps (circa 1980-2006) were collected and used to develop a geographic database of conservation practices supported by the USDA Natural Resource Conservation Service. The CEAP-WAS database can be queried by conservation practice, total acreages enrolled, year of implementation, and location. The CEAP-WAS database is integral to understanding the links between conservation practice implementation and placement with observed changes in hydrologic processes within a small southern Coastal Plain watershed. All associated geographic information has been provided in shapefile format and has been projected into universal transverse Mercator coordinates (zone 17), using NAD83 as the datum and GRS80 as the ellipsoid. Data may be accessed via ftp://www.tiftonars.org/, archived in a folder named ceap_data.