Fields to Streams: Managing Water in a Rural Landscape - Part One

This document is designed to assist rural landowners, land managers, and conservation professionals in protecting rural streams. The emphasis is on land and water management practices that reduce streambank, bluff, and ravine erosion. Part One describes how Minnesota’s landscapes were formed, how water continues to shape the landscape, and how land management affects water flows, shapes streams and rivers, and influences water quality.  

Living Soil Film

(Time 1:00:22) Our soils support 95 percent of all food production, and by 2060, our soils will be asked to give us as much food as we have consumed in the last 500 years. They filter our water. They are one of our most cost-effective reservoirs for sequestering carbon. They are our foundation for biodiversity. And they are vibrantly alive, teeming with 10,000 pounds of biological life in every acre. Yet in the last 150 years, we’ve lost half of the basic building block that makes soil productive.