Water quality is strongly linked to watershed land use. Due to land use practices and rapid rural-urban land conversion, nonpoint source nitrogen loading is a serious threat to water quality. Helping communities to understand the factors that influence water quality and nitrogen discharges is critical to helping them target ways of controlling nitrogen loading. This project will analyze more than two years of water quality data for the Quinnipiac River subwatersheds in order to (1) differentiate the role of land use from other factors that influence nitrogen loading; (2) generate models for predicting nitrogen loading for subwatersheds; (3) quantify the relationship between the nitrogen loading and land use conversion. This project will transfer scientific information to communities to help them learn the water quality and assess the potential impact of proposed development projects.