Landowners Guide
Welcome to Homer Soil and Water’s Landowner’s Guide portal. The Guide you can download here focuses on Anchor River, Deep Creek, Ninilchik River, and Stariski Creek watersheds. 
The guide contains two easy-to-use sections:
1. Four Introductory Articles:
Four introductory articles cover topics that are a bit too broad to cover in a short watershedipedia entry (the watershedipedia is introduced below). These stand-alone articles are from about 6 to 25 pages long. Wherever a word or phrase in these articles is highlighted in blue, that means it has its own entry in the watershedipedia.
article 1: Salmon species and life cycle
This article discusses the salmon species that occur in the Anchor River, Deep Creek, Ninilchik River, and Stariski Creek watersheds. The article is divided into five sections:
- What salmon species are found in each river system
- What are the stages of a salmon's life cycle
- What goes on during each life stage
- What goes into creating the habitats needed by each salmon life stage
- Some details about the life stages of particular salmon species
article 2: Five S's for landowners
This article covers what we call the five S's of land use and how you can achieve them. The five S's focus on using lands in ways that are:
- Safe for you, others, and the environment
- Suitable for the conditions you're dealing with (such as soils, slopes, water table, plants, etc.)
- Sustainable over the long-term, with minimal costs and upkeep
- Satisfying to you, your family, your neighbors, and your watershed
- Salmon friendly, so that salmon populations in your watershed can continue to thrive
article 3: Exploring your watershed with online tools
This article covers in some detail two excellent online tools that provide information on peninsula watersheds:
- The Kenai Peninsula Borough's Interactive Parcel Viewer, which gives the public access to the borough's geographic information system (GIS)
- The Kenai Watershed Forum's atlas, which offers many kinds of information about watersheds, all organized in terms of watershed and subwatershed boundaries.
article 4: Examples of research in our watersheds
This article summarizes some of the recent and ongoing research in lower peninsula watersheds (particularly in the Anchor River watershed). Links to recent research reports are provided where available.
2. A watershedipedia (think Wikipedia for your watershed)
The watershedipedia is an alphabetically organized reference with brief discussions of over 200 topics relevant to landowners in the Anchor River, Deep Creek, Ninilchik River, and Stariski Creek watersheds. You’ll want to go straight to the watershedipedia if you're looking for information on a specific topic. For example,
- Want to know which salmon species use a nearby stream? Go to the entry for Anadromous waters catalog.
- Want to know what kinds of soils you have and what they're good for (and not-so-good for)? Go to entries for Soil and Soil survey.
- Want to know some good ways to stabilize an eroding streambank? Go to Streambank stabilization and restoration, which will suggest you also check out Buffers and Soil bioengineering.
- Want to know where you can learn about getting a wetland permit (and what IS a wetland permit, anyway)? Go to Wetland permit and to Army Corps of Engineers.
- Want to know how the state plans to use that piece of state land near you? Go to Kenai Area Plan, which will suggest you also check out Anchor River-Fritz Creek Critical Habitat Area and Caribou Hills Special Use Area, as well as Alaska Department of Natural Resources, Division of Parks and Outdoor Recreation and Oil and gas.
Just skimming through the watershedipedia table of contents will suggest topics you might want to explore.
