Scope 1-Steven Evans: 104B Water Resources Research Institute Annual Base Program 2021-2026

The horse industry is key to Kentucky’s economy and identity, particularly in the central Kentucky Inner Bluegrass region of the state. However, these horse farms can have negative impacts on waterways due to soil erosion, habitat disturbance, stream channel alteration, and nutrient and fecal pathogen pollution from manure. Conservation practices are available to mitigate these impacts, however some of these practices, including riparian zone buffers, seem to be underutilized in central Kentucky. Horse farms have been identified as an underserved target audience for conservation practice outreach (Prokopy et al., 2011), and understanding the motivations and barriers to implementation is critical to developing outreach materials designed to reach this audience. Under this study, central Kentucky horse farm owners and managers will be surveyed about their horse farm operations and use of conservation practices on these farms to understand the prevalence of implementation in the region and better characterize this target audience. Interviews with horse farms will narrow in on the motivations and barriers to the implementation of riparian buffers. Based on the feedback from these interviews, outreach materials will be developed.