Enviro-Geo provides geospatial services to a wide range of public and private sector clients in a variety of sectors, including agriculture, forestry, and municipal. The protection of our surface water and groundwater resources is one critical application that could benefit greatly from our geospatial approach.

Water quality and source water protection are a growing concern, especially in areas with a high amount of agricultural land use. Agriculture can be a significant source of non-point source pollution (NPSP) to both groundwater and surface water. Excess nutrients can be transported to surface water in the form of runoff, and to groundwater in the form of leaching. These increased nutrient levels can result in several serious environmental and health concerns. One method to accomplish improved water quality is to encourage increased adoption of best management practices by the stewards of the land. A science-based approach towards the improved understanding of the factors influencing the transport of nutrients from croplands is critical.

Watersheds have been referred to as "nature’s boundaries", and serve as a logical management unit for many issues of agriculture-derived NPSP. Enviro-Geo recognizes that management activities should be evaluated within the constraints defined by the watershed boundary, as the land and water resources within the drainage basin are connected and management activities can impact other parts of the watershed. However, agricultural policies applied at the watershed scale without consideration of site-specific characteristics could result in vastly different impacts due to spatial variations in climate, soil, and land use within the watershed. Using models consisting of biogeochemical processes provide a feasible way to predict the site-specific impacts of agricultural management by tracking the interactions amongst the various driving factors, including soil, climate, and agronomy.

Enviro-Geo develops custom watershed-based versions of the respected DNDC model that allow land managers to evaluate the impact of climate and management practices on nitrate losses, including both leaching and runoff. These tools can contribute invaluable pieces of information in the planning of source water protection. These watershed tools have been developed for several cropland-dominated watersheds in the US National Estuarine Research Reserve (NERR) system, including Old Woman Creek (Ohio), Elkhorn Slough (California), and Delaware.