Nutrient Reduction is an indicator of the Midwest Landscape Initiative’s (MLI) 2023 Midwest Conservation Blueprint. The Blueprint is a basemap of priority lands and waters for conservation across the Midwest consisting of over 20 social and environmental values representing diverse interests across society. This indicator was chosen as a targetable, important feature of the MLI goals that will be used to track conditions over time and prioritize areas for conservation. Indicators were defined through elicitation and prioritization exercises with federal and state participants. Criteria for the indicators includes 1) actionable, 2) measurable, 3) relevant to multiple groups across the region, and/or 4) representative of other social and/or environmental values. This indicator identifies nutrient loading that leads to hypoxia issues in downstream waters within the Midwest Landscape. It prioritizes areas based on a catchment’s contribution to the loading of nitrogen, phosphorus, and suspended sediments. This indicator originates from the USGS 2012 SPARROW Model for the Midwest. To create this layer, MLI partners, members, and staff completed the following mapping steps: projected all input data to NAD83 (2011) UTM Zone 15N, joined the nitrogen, phosphorus, and suspended sediment data with catchment boundaries to spatially depict the nutrient loading of each catchment, mosaicked the results of each nutrient into a single raster, and emphasized natural assets within each catchment in the final raster resulting in the following values: 1 – Low nutrient load, not a natural asset, 2 – Low nutrient load, natural assets, 3 – Median nutrient load, not a natural asset, 4 – Median nutrient load, natural assets, 5 – High nutrient load, not a natural asset, 6 – High nutrient load, natural assets. Finally, we removed highly altered areas using our Highly Altered Areas mask. For full mapping details, please refer to the Midwest Conservation Blueprint 2023 Development Process document.
