New Visual Story Map Released: The Platte River Resiliency Project
Sustaining the Platte River for Wildlife and People
The Central Platte Local Leadership Committee, in collaboration with Central Platte Resiliency Fund and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, has just released a new web-based visual story map.
This site was developed to provide the residents, leaders, and businesses of the Central Platte Region with a brief overview of this river’s wealth of water resources, threats affecting them and how you can help. As you scroll through these pages, we hope that you will come away with a better appreciation and understanding of:
- The importance of the health of the Platte River to the economy, environment, agriculture and well-being of all regional residents
- The challenges and issues the river faces
- The considerable success the area has made in protecting and enhancing the river, and
- The opportunities everyone has for working together to ensure the quality of this river continues to be a positive factor in the region’s quality of life for generations to come.
Note, the scroll function of this tool works best in non-Microsoft browsers such as Chrome or Firefox.
Platte River Resilience Fund
The Nebraska Community Fund has released it 2020 Annual Report highlighting the establishment of the Platte River Resilience Fund (see page 26). The Fund was developed as a result of the work and dedication of the Water for Agriculture project’s Central Platte Local Leadership Team and is designed to ensure sustainable support for managing invasive vegetation impeding the river from flowing freely.
Central Platte Project Updates
Central Platte Survey: Summary Results Released
The Water for Agriculture project conducted a mail Central Platte survey of both agricultural and residential landowners in the Central Platte region, NE. The mail survey assessed landowner values, beliefs and behaviors related to streams, rivers and groundwater. Addresses for the survey were obtained from publicly available property tax records. A sample of 500 agricultural landowners were sent surveys, and 117 responded (for a response rate of 23.3%). A sample of 503 residential landowners were sent surveys, and 60 responded (11.9%). These numbers are consistent with or above the national average for mail survey responses.
Why this survey?
The survey was developed by Penn State in conjunction with the Water for Agriculture program’s North Platte region Local Leadership Team to better understand the perspectives of landowners in the North Platte region regarding ground and surface water issues. Our leadership team and its partners will use these results to inform and prioritize its activities to meet the most critical water and agricultural needs facing these watersheds. To learn more, visit http://water4ag.psu.edu or contact Mark Burbach at 402-472-8210 or mburbach1@unl.edu