Aziz Bouzaher

Application of Epic Within an Integrated Modeling System to Evaluate Soil Erosion in the Canadian Prairies

There are approximately 30 million hectares of cultivated land in the three Prairie Provinces of Canada: Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. Prairie soils are productive but subject to degradation by wind and water erosion, salinisation, and organic matter decline (Coote, 1984; PFRA, 1990). Climatic factors, soil properties, and either direct (e.g. management) or indirect (e.g. farm policy) human activities interact and dictate, in the end, the extent of degradation.

Modeling Nonpoint Source Pollution in an Integrated System

Nonpoint source pollution from the agricultural sector is forcing regulators to rethink national environmental and agricultural policy. Nonpoint sources include the handling and disposal of animal wastes, application of chemical fertilizers to cropland, soil erosion, and sedimentation from cultural practices, and the use of pesticides in crop production. New policy strategies that are explicitly coordinated between the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) may well be necessary to efficiently reduce human and wildlife risk at minimal impact on agricultural producers. But evaluating these proposed strategies will require both economic and environmental indicators of success. These indicators must be estimated in a timely fashion before policies are finalized. Consequently, there has been increased attention on constructing an integrated agri-ecological economic modeling system that can simulate the potential tradeoffs of new policy strategies.