John T. Heaston is managing consultant for The Aquamart project for the Nebraska Water Balance Alliance. With a background in applied anthropology, Heaston focuses on environmental, economic, and agricultural issues as they relate to river basin development and watershed management.

He is currently working on projects such as:

• Multi-scale conservation planning and evaluation
• Performance-based irrigation conservation for watershed recovery
• Value-added eco-marketing as a conservation strategy
• Promotion of local leadership development in conservation practice in Nebraska
• Work with the sand/gravel and aggregate industry of Nebraska to promote site-appropriate reclamation of mine sites, and to avoid ecologically sensitive lands in mine siting
• Private lands-based conservation programs including sustainable grassland management and improved irrigation management for conservation
• Strategic planning and goal setting for conservation organizations in Nebraska
• Understanding how farmers/ranchers/communities formulate risk from uncertainty and how that places constraint on adopting conservation practices and technologies.

Heaston is a 1993 graduate of the University of Nebraska at Lincoln anthropology department. He attended the University of Kentucky and studied applied anthropology. He is a native of Elm Creek, Nebraska.