How to compare best agricultural management practices at the watershed scale?

To design the restoration plans requested by the European Water Framework Directive, local regulators need to implement technically designed modifications of farming practices. Their main interest relies on the determination of which modifications are the most appropriate to the local conditions. To help this decision process, a selection grid has been built within the European AgriBMPWater project (5th RTD Framework Program). The main interest of this grid is to allow the comparison of different "Best Management Practices" regarding their environmental effectiveness, the associated costs and their acceptability for farmers. This paper presents the different steps of the method, some tools that have been used and their technical requirements, illustrates with some results the integrated tool that has been developed and provides keys for interpretation.