Dr. Mike White of USDA-ARS at Temple has developed the Agricultural Conservation Reduction Estimator (ACRE), a tool that uses over 100 million SWAT simulations to estimate the effects of applying over 20 structural and non-structural BMPs on cropland sediment and nutrient losses for all major cropland types and rotations in the contiguous United States. ACRE is available as an easily used, very simple tool which requires the user to input only the state, county, soil series, cropping system, and conservation practices of interest. Outputs include annual means and ranges of total sediment, nitrogen, and phosphorus losses. See acre.brc.tamus.edu for more information.

Dr. White has also developed the Small Watershed nutrient Forecasting Tool (SWIFT) to allow rapid estimation of sediment and nutrient loads from small watersheds in the U.S. using common information such as watershed size, land use, and location. Estimated loads are provided as a distribution to illustrate the relative uncertainty inherent in the methods used. SWIFT is based on export coefficients for major land use categories in the US derived from SWAT (Soil and Water Assessment Tool) and delivery ratios based on data derived from CEAP (Conservation Effects and Assessment Project). See swift.brc.tamus.edu for more information.