Joe's Bayou Land Use Sampling Project

Joe's Bayou is a watershed located in the Ouachita River Basin in northeast Louisiana. Louisiana's 2002 Water Quality Inventory, Section 305(b) Report states that Joe's Bayou supports primary and secondary recreation activities but does not support fish and wildlife propagation. The suspected causes of impairment are nonpoint source pollutants in the form of total suspended solids, turbidity, and carbofuran from irrigated and nonirrigated crop production.

To reduce the deposition of these materials, the annual sediment load coming from the area's agricultural fields must be reduced. Through a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency grant, the Office of Soil and Water Conservation is working with the landowners and operators of the East Carroll Soil and Water Conservation District to implement site specific best management practices (BMPs) to reduce the amount of nonpoint source pollutants entering Joe's Bayou. GIS technology supports the implementation of BMPs on the agricultural fields that drain into Joe's Bayou. It also is being used to create points for land use sampling within Joe's Bayou and other impaired watersheds throughout Louisiana.

The Office of Soil and Water Conservation has created a statewide sampling system consisting of a three-level hierarchy with primary sampling unit (PSU) cell sizes of 500 m², 1,000 m², and 2,000 m². This map shows a 500 m² PSU sampling grid composed of two pseudocounty sampling grids centered on the Joe's Bayou Project area and displayed over Landsat 5 Thematic Mapper satellite imagery, color infrared orthophotography provided by the Louisiana Oil Spill Coordinator's Office and U.S. Geological Survey Digital Raster Graphics mosaicked by the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality.