By Stevin Westcott, Press Officer, Southern Research Station
A Forest Service research scientist at the USDA FS/NRCS National Agroforestry Center in Lincoln, NE recently received an Award of Excellence from the National Association of Government Communicators (NAGC) for the center’s natural resource guide titled Conservation Buffers: Design Guidelines for Buffers, Corridors and Greenways.
NAGC honored Conservation Buffers with the third place finish in the Soft/Hard Cover Book, 50 pages or more category as part of the 2010 Blue Pencil and Gold Screen Awards. NAGC members honored award winners during a reception and banquet held last month in Washington, D.C.
“I was thrilled when I first learned about the award in April,” said Gary Bentrup, co-author and research landscape planner at the USDA National Agroforestry Center. “It really means a lot to have a group of communications professionals recognize and honor your work.”
The NAGC Blue Pencil & Gold Screen Awards Competition salutes superior communications efforts of government agencies and recognizes the people who create them. Blue Pencil Award categories are designed for writing, editing, photography, and published products, such as pamphlets, books, newsletters, and other related materials. Gold Screen Award categories recognize audio-visual and multimedia products, including broadcast and Internet-based products. The complete listing of award winners is available on the NAGC website at www.nagconline.org/documents/bpgs2010.pdf.
Published in 2009, Conservation Buffers is a planning and design tool to facilitate communication amongst the diversity of people, from landowners to managers, involved in land management decisions. Synthesized from over 1,400 peer-reviewed articles and using simplified graphics and text, the small but comprehensive guide provides landowners and managers with information on agricultural and forestry buffering methods. The book allows users to assess potential benefits and trade-offs a buffer might have on different resource concerns such as soil and water quality. Using the ecological and design principles in the guide, users can begin to design buffers that provide multiple benefits, while minimizing potential conflicts. Conservation Buffers was extensively peer-reviewed and field-tested by more than 100 scientists and resource professionals (representing the range of end-users) throughout its development before final production to evaluate its scientific validity and practical utility. Over 300 comments and suggestions were incorporated into the final publication. For more information, visit the Conservation Buffers website: www.bufferguidelines.net.
The author of Conservation Buffers has received several awardsfor the guide’s quality and design. The Guide, currently available in English and Spanish, is also being translated into French and Chinese, to meet the broader demand for this kind of information.
NAGC is a national not-for-profit professional network of federal, state and local government employees who disseminate information within and outside government. The USDA National Agroforestry Center is a joint project between the USDA agencies, the Forest Service and Natural Resources Conservation Service. The Center, found online at http://www.unl.edu/nac/, is part of the Forest Service’s Southern Research Station.