Diana Sadowski Final Project Analysis Introduction: Waushara County is where I call home, it may be far from any

cities and we may have to drive far to get places but there are many things that make me proud to call it my home. Many of the people who live in Waushara County are hardworking people who either work on farms or work in businesses that cater to the needs of farmers. Many of those who dont work for these businesses work in businesses that cater to the need of people who come to Waushara County to enjoy the beautiful lakes and rivers that span the whole county. Having these two industries in Waushara County leads to a rich diversity of activities that can be enjoyed but there is one major issue that is sometimes overlooked when you put agriculture and water together. Non-point source pollution is pollution that is not directly attributed to the dumping of pollutants but the indirect polluting of water by runoff that carries the pollutants. Take for instance a farm, this farm uses fertilizers to help the crops grow and pesticides to keep insects from ruining the crop. If done properly the amount of fertilizers and pesticide put on the crop will only affect the area that it was intended to. But if applied in excess or improperly, a rain or even just gravity can carry these pollutants to a water source like a lake or a river. Depending on the pollutant different changes will happen to the ecology and water quality of the now polluted water source. If enough excess is put into the water source it can spread further to other water sources like to other lakes and rivers or even into our ground water.

Objective(s): My objective is to determine the percentage of Waushara County that is at risk of non-point source pollution caused by agriculture.

List of Data: The data that needs to be acquired is the Waushara County landcover shape file, a shape file for river in Wisconsin and a shape file for other water bodies in Wisconsin.

Diana Sadowski Final Project Analysis Methodology: The Waushara County landcover shape file was converted from a raster into a shape file. After the Waushara County shape file was obtained it was determined that the outlines in the county shape file were unnecessary to this study and were set so that they couldnt be seen so that the map could be more clearly read. On to the shape file was placed two other shapefiles. One was the shape file for rivers in Wisconsin; the other was the shapefile for other water bodies in Wisconsin. Since these shape files were for all of Wisconsin they needed to be clipped down so that just the ones in Waushara County showed. To show where the agricultural areas were in Waushara County the attribute table was opened and then the areas that had a grid code of 110 through 124 were selected. With this selection a new layer was made called Waushara County landcover, the layer was then dissolved to make the layer cleaner to see. Next there was a dissolved buffer of 500 meters placed around the river and the other water bodies. After this was done the agricultural area layer was intersected with both the buffer around the river and other water bodies. A new layer was made with this data and was dissolved so that each individual intersection wasnt seen separately but as a whole. To obtain the data to use in the analysis the data table for each intersection (river/agriculture and water bodies/agriculture). The statistic option for the total area of each was used. Using the number listed under sum, both sums were added together to get the total area at risk of non-point source pollution. Next the total area of Waushara County was obtained by taking the sum of all areas in Waushara County from the attribute table. The data was analyzed by taking the total area at risk and dividing it by the total area of Waushara County and then taking this data and multiplying by 100% to come up with a total percentage of Waushara County that is at risk of non-point source pollution caused by agriculture. Results and Conclusions: The total affected area of Waushara County is 307.93 km2, the total area of Waushara County is 1649.46km2 so this makes the total percentage of Waushara county, that is at risk of non-point source pollution caused by agriculture, 18.67%. I was

Diana Sadowski Final Project Analysis surprised that the number seemed low, thinking it through though, 18.67% is a significant chunk of Waushara County that is affected by non-point source pollution. Those people that use that percentage of land could be greatly affected by the pollution. So raising the awareness of nonpoint source pollution and the remedies for it, could help keep these areas at risk safe from this pollution. What I would have like to study if I had more time and resources would be the effects of the non-point source pollution on the groundwater supply of Waushara County. Due to the fact that Waushara County is located in the Central Sands Region of Wisconsin, the soil type would greatly affect how the non-point source pollution is spread. This study also only took into account agricultural sources of non-point source pollution, there are other sources including normal households that contribute to the issue. Data Sources: The data was retrieved from the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources FTP directory. I believe this was a good place to retrieve this data from because this directory has no bias it is just a directory that houses data for the state of Wisconsin.

Literature Cited EPA. (2011, September 29). Water: Polluted runoff . Retrieved from http://water.epa.gov/polwaste/nps/whatis.cfm WDNR. (2012). Ftp directory(hydro_24k). DOI: ftp://dnrftp01.wi.gov/geodata/