History of the Headwaters Fund
In 2015, The Nature Conservancy (TNC) created the Minnesota Headwaters Fund through a seed investment of $500,000 from Ecolab, Inc. Focused on proactively protecting water quality in the Upper Mississippi River Basin, the Minnesota Headwaters Fund enables downstream entities to invest in high-impact, upstream conservation projects. In just over a year, the fund has grown to over $3 million, well on the way to its three-year goal of $10 million, and has to date leveraged an additional $11 million in public funding (The Nature Conservancy, 2015).
Current land management practices and land use trends threaten the health of the Upper Mississippi River and, subsequently, drinking water quality. Recent research shows rates of cropland expansion throughout Minnesota on the order of 200,000 acres from 2008-2012, largely at the expense of forests, grasslands, and wetlands in the headwaters region (Lark et al., 2015).
However, when targeted at nutrient sources and pathways, high-impact upstream conservation practices such as riparian buffers or land set-asides have the potential achieve measurable water quality improvements and help prevent future water quality deterioration (Tomer and Locke, 2011; Arabi et al., 2008). This project seeks to determine whether investments in such conservation practices can not only protect one of the world’s most iconic rivers, but also result in an economic benefit for the cities that depend on it.
Current land management practices and land use trends threaten the health of the Upper Mississippi River and, subsequently, drinking water quality. Recent research shows rates of cropland expansion throughout Minnesota on the order of 200,000 acres from 2008-2012, largely at the expense of forests, grasslands, and wetlands in the headwaters region (Lark et al., 2015).
However, when targeted at nutrient sources and pathways, high-impact upstream conservation practices such as riparian buffers or land set-asides have the potential achieve measurable water quality improvements and help prevent future water quality deterioration (Tomer and Locke, 2011; Arabi et al., 2008). This project seeks to determine whether investments in such conservation practices can not only protect one of the world’s most iconic rivers, but also result in an economic benefit for the cities that depend on it.