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Jeff Simley: [0:10] Jeff Simley with U.S. Geological Survey,
and this is our Hydrography Webinar Series, webinar 5. Like I said, I'm hosting today,
and helping me out also is Sue Buto, Al Rea, and Addison Jason, also of the U.S Geological
Survey.
[0:28] The purpose of this webinars is, one, to share success stories from users who have
solved real, real world problems using hydrographic data, to provide information on the NHD WBD
and related products and provide a forum for users similar to what might be encountered
in a conference setting.
[0:51] Some of the example topics that we cover in this seminar series are hydrology,
resource management, pollution control, fisheries, emergency management, mapping, and elevation
hydrography integration.
[1:06] Today, our main speaker is going to talk about The USDA Forest Service Watershed
Condition Framework: An approach for assessing and improving watershed condition with Mike
Eberle. Following that, we'll have questions and answers. We'll talk about that protocol
in a second.
[1:21] We'll have two lightning talks today, be as basically five minute long talks. First
of all, Preserving High Quality Riparian Vegetation with David Richey. Second, Streamgage Drainage
Area Boundaries with Curtis Price. We'll follow that with you answering a few questions for
us about the value of this session.
[1:43] The audio is in listen only mode, so we can't hear you out there. For audiovisual
problems, the best thing to do is to try to log out and log back in again.
[1:57] Questions and answers, we'll use the chat feature in WebEx, so there won't be an
opportunity for you to verbally ask questions but rather do it through the chat. Sue Buto
and Al Rea will monitor those questions that come in from the chat.
[2:16] When we come to the end of Mike's talk, then they'll start reading off some of those
questions, and Mike will have a chance to answer them. We'll do that for about 10 minutes
or so. Then at the very end of the session, after the lightning talks, just be aware that
there is some poll questions to be aware of.
[2:35] Which parts of the presentation were most valuable? Which parts of the presentation
were least valuable? What topics are you interested in learning more about in the future?
[2:46] I'll also announce that the next Hydrography Seminar Series is January 21. We'll be talking
about High Resolution NHD Plus, so watch for announcements about that and hope that you
can join us then. p.1
[3:02] Today's main topic, once again, is USDA Forest Service Watershed Condition Framework:
An approach for assessing and improving watershed condition with Mike Eberley.
[3:11] Mike is the Forest Service's Surface Water Program Leader. Since coming to the
Forest Service in January 2011, his work has primarily focused the agency's implementation
of the Watershed Condition Framework through the development of policy, technical resources,
and national guidance.
[3:25] In addition, Mike has assisted with the effort to implement the agency's National
Best Management Practices Program. Mike has worked for the USDOI's Bureau of Land Management
as its Water Lead and as the US Fish and Wildlife Service's Pacific Region's Chief of Water
Resources, in Portland, Oregon.
[3:42] With that, we'll turn it over then to Mike.
Mike: [3:56] OK, we're getting there. It doesn't
want to stay on. There we go. We're going to try with this one.
[4:24] Thank you very much for inviting me to speak on the Watershed Condition Framework
today. The Watershed Condition Framework...
Allyson Jayson: [4:35] Mike, I'm not seeing it yet. Anybody
else seeing it? A
l Rea: [4:39] No, we're not seeing it.
Allyson: [4:42] Can you try sharing again?
Al: [4:47] You may have to go to that quick start
tab to see the "Share My Desktop." Allyson: [4:55] There you go. I still see a green screen.
There you go. I see it. Mike:
[5:08] All right. Thank you very much. Sorry for that little glitch there. I was going
to say that the watershed condition framework uses the GIS, specifically the NHD WBD data,
not only as an analysis tool for the restoration work it does but also we're finding it very
helpful as a huge communication tool.
[5:33] A big part of the watershed condition framework is the interaction it allows for
individual forests to have with partners in their area. When they can look watersheds
or subwatersheds on the map. Take a look at the resources involved, it just makes the
communication aspects of it much cleaner and much easier. So, they're all speaking of the
same language.
[6:04] So throughout the talk, I will be talking about priority watersheds. I wanted to be
clear that these are the 12 digits, so they're realistically the subwatersheds. So, they're
the 12 digit HUC 6s. That's the entity that was decided to focus on with the watershed
condition framework. p.2
[6:35] So today's talk, I'm going to give you a little bit of background on why we initiated
the watershed condition framework I'll talk a little bit. on what the WCF is, and then
at the end, we'll bring in a little bit of some GIS data, and tools, and resources that
we've been using to move forward.
[6:51] First, a little bit about the Forest Service. The mission of the Forest Service
is to sustain health, diversity, and productivity of the nation's forest and grasslands for
present and future generations. And that guys is a lot of what we do.
[7:05] So where are the national forest and grasslands? Just a quick overview of, the
green are the forests and the tan areas are the national grasslands. At a glance, the
Forest Service is what I consider four of the largest land management agencies in the
United States.
[7:28] There is of course the BLM, Forest Service, Park Service, and the Fish and Wildlife
Service. Forest Service manages about 193 million acres. That's about eight and a half
percent of the total area. It was broken up into nine regions that we use for they’re
geographically aligned of course.
[7:49] It consists of about 155 national forests. Some forests have been combined, so look it
up. You may see fewer, probably closer to 114. But as far as individually named forests,
there’s 155 of them. We're in almost every state. There are six states that we’re not
presently in.
[8:12] So some fast facts about the Forest Service, 18 percent of the water in the United
States comes off of Forest Service lands. Of course, that's a lot more higher percentage
in the Western US than the Eastern United States.
[8:28] We've provided drinking water to over 180 million people. Lots of habitat, lots
for the threatened the endangered species, and, this is a good one, one of the things
we do is the multiple use mandate. People come on Forest Service land for many reasons
including of course fishing and kayaking, canoeing, on over the 220,000 miles of streams
and 2.3 million acres of lakes, ponds, and reservoirs.
[8:59] So, it's a lot of water, and water is a big deal for us. The focus of the chief,
of course, improvement of the water resources. Maintaining the water quality of the Forest
Service recently laid out a strategic plan covering FY 15 to FY 20, 2015 to 2020. One
of the major goals is to keep providing or improve upon providing clean water to the
American public.
[9:33] Also including is sustaining of jobs and the restoration of the landscapes. So
now, let's try to focus on the WCF. So why did we develop the Watershed Condition Framework?
Well, certainly, restoration wasn't new to the Forest Service, but what had happened
is we were having trouble really being accountable and holding ourselves accountable.
p.3
[9:53] A lot of restoration money came to the Forest Service, and we were doing these
little restoration projects here and there. There was no way for us to roll up that information
and show congress that all of these tiny restoration efforts were actually beneficial in the end.
[10:21] So the Watershed Condition Framework was organized, and it is a way to show the
impacts of the restoration on both the local scale and then also up to the national scale.
[10:40] So, it's a comprehensive approach for restoring watersheds. The WCF focused
primarily on the aquatic side of restoration. It does have some accounting for upland terrestrial
restoration and impact that may have on the watershed health, and that is taken into account.
[10:57] The primary focus is on aquatic aspects, and we'll see that soon. As I mentioned, the
multiple scales is very important. It's hard to do, to find a solution that means something
on the ground when you're working with partners and has that same action roll up and still
tell a story at the national level.
[11:25] So the Watershed Condition Framework, I'm going to review the six steps, go over
them pretty quickly. It's a six step circular process and coming back to the beginning is
an important aspect. Step A is really doing an assessment on what is the condition of
the watershed.
[11:45] It was a rapid assessment back in late 2010, early 2011, when we initially did
this. We had a set of criteria that we set out as far as how the watershed should score
based on the indicators and how it scored out. It was done by a group of professionals
of mixed disciplines. You can see there from hydrologists, a lot of fish biologists, soil
scientists.
[12:20] It was really heavily relying on the professional judgment of the employees. Number
three there, it did use a lot of local data, GIS data layers, and national databases. Now,
one thing that we're real proud of on the Watershed Condition Framework is this is a
nationwide effort that was done in a consistent basis.
[12:55] To do that with the Forest Service or any one of the land management agencies
on a large scale, to develop that consistency, is a very difficult thing to do, especially
since some areas are data rich and other areas might be data poor. So trying to write standards
to follow is a tightrope sometimes.
[13:16] These are the 12 indicators. The model on the left side just shows you how we organized
those. There's aquatic physical and aquatic biological and then terrestrial physical and
terrestrial biological. One thing we're going to come back to at the end, is really the
first seven from water quality down to soils. p.4
[13:42] Those are the indicators that really lend themselves well to the data that’s
available and using GIS or NHD and WBD. As I said, I'll talk more about that later.
[13:57] We did the assessment, and this is the results of the assessment. The green areas
are where the watersheds were determined to be functioning properly. The yellow is where
the watersheds were functioning at risk. The red areas are where the impaired function.
[14:17] This is how it came out, I guess, statistically. Out of 15,000 watersheds that
we assessed, just over half of them were functioning properly and only three percent were impaired.
[14:33] Step B was after we did the assessment, we had to figure out how we were going to
focus our efforts and on which priority watersheds we were going to focus. Selection criteria
were active collaboration and partnership opportunities. Like I said before, partnerships
and nurturing of partnerships was an important aspect of the WCF.
[15:09] We had to talk to think about where there were ecological or social or economic
considerations and what other partners were going on, with other agencies as well. It
seems important to understand that this wasn't necessarily looking at the worst watersheds
and trying to work on them first. That way of looking at watershed restoration could
be very expensive.
[15:31] Those watersheds, the red ones, can be very compromised and would take a lot of
money to improve those, whereas sometimes even the what we call the green watersheds,
or the watersheds that are already functioning properly, they could be trending downwards
for a variety of reasons and by putting a little money into those watersheds. Little
investment and resources, it could keep them at the green level.
[15:59] So all of these considerations had to be taken into account. The starred areas
are where the first round of priority watersheds were. I do want to say something, that address
at the bottom, the interactive mapping address, it was just bad timing, I guess.
[16:22] About three weeks ago, they were transferring a bunch of data and updating the, not the
database, but where the data is housed, and trying to update it. Going through that update,
it made the interactive mapper not functional. We had been using it for years. It worked
out real well, and now it's not working.
[16:49] We are hoping to get it back online in about a week or two. I wanted to let everyone
know that. So once we figure out where we're going to do the work, we have to try to think
about what work needs to be done. So we developed a watershed restoration action plan. Again,
we reached out to partners. We take a look at a lot of the data that we have.
[17:11] This is an excellent point of being able to map out on the different HUCs exactly
what areas are impaired and whether they are doing well using those 12 indicators.
p.5
[17:28] Those are really helpful tools to bring people around and to get the partners
that we wanted. There are partners who are big believers in fish passage or fish, and
they can see where maybe the fish weren't able to move around as well or where there
are issues associated with that.
[17:44] We have partners that are very focused on our road systems, and they can see where
the roads were having issues or potentially contributing to the detriment of the watershed.
These maps were very helpful.
[18:02] What goes into a WRAP? The list of partners, the key watershed issues, important
ecological values. And then really, a real important thing is really how much this is
going to cost to help it improve this watershed.
[18:21] Step B of the Watershed Condition Framework is to implement the projects in
the WRAP. Initially, we thought it would take between three and five years, but we're finding
out that they are taking a little bit longer. Up to six or up to seven years potentially
depending on how much NEPA needs to get done and just how prepared the forest was initially
ready to do those.
[18:53] Then the last, or the second to the last step is tracking those accomplishments.
So when these essential projects were completed on the ground, put them into a GIS database
and map out the area that was worked on or that was improved, and be able to track it
systematically.
[19:12] This is an important aspect for the Forest Service. A lot of things that we do
are focused on outputs and outcomes, meaning boardfoot of timber or soil and water acres
improved, or those types of very high level targets.
[19:30] The Watershed Condition Framework is a new type of a target called...It's more
of an outcome. It's a recognized target that takes years to develop and to achieve. It's
not a per year basis. The Forest Service is still having trouble speaking in terms of
outcomes over output. Outputs has been around for years and are very much a part of our
culture.
[20:10] Finally, the step back is to monitor. If we say, "Did we do what we said we are
going to do, and does it have the effect that we thought it would have?" What we thought
was the impact we thought it would have is based largely on personal or professional
experience and expertise. But it's also based on models that we can build. There are many
GIS models, and I'll talk about those also.
[20:37] Even though the interactive map is not currently working, it is very useful for
our partners and the general public to go in and take a look at the work that we're
doing through the interactive mapping software.
[20:55] Let's see. This is an example. If you zoom in to anywhere you want in the United
States and look at the different HUC codes, you can pick those, and the information that's
shown are the indicator scores. p.6
[21:13] You can take a look at the copy the watershed restoration action plan. You can
take a look at what partners are working with us to improve that area, and what the projects
actually are. We even put information on there that describes why that watershed was determined
to be a priority. Unfortunately, it's not working. I wish it was.
[21:38] Going back to the indicators and taking a look at the top seven, I just wanted to
give everyone an idea of what these indicators say or general description. Water quality
is pretty straight forward. It expresses the operation of physical, chemical and biologic
components of the water quality.
[21:48] I won’t read all of these to you, I wanted to give everyone a sense on the very
high level general question that they're asking. For water quality I’m going to go a little
deeper. This is the rule or the guidance that was given. You can see for the water quality
indicator. It's over here. The attributes, it's either impaired waters if it's on the
303D list or if it's not on the 303D list.
[22:22] If it is on a 303D list, if they do exist, and basically it's either it's good,
it's fair, or it's poor, based on these criteria of no listed watersheds, less than 10 percent
or more than 10 percent.
[22:43] We also provide examples for them to use in case they had questions on what
makes sense or what doesn't. There are rules like this for each of the 12 indicators. Actually,
that information is available in the internet if you want.
[23:05] I want to say thanks to EPA for lending me this slide. This is a great example of
what I mean by communication tool and how beneficial it can be working with partners
and/or even within the Forest Service itself, just be able to see something graphically.
[23:26] Quickly, this is just some random watersheds. The red areas are the HUC 6s.
Here, you have a TMDL section. These thicker lines are where there is actually TMDL in
place. The green here are supporting waters. The yellows are impaired waters. Looking at
them here, it's really hard to get a sense on how that impacts the watershed.
[24:01] EPA is beginning to model it into catchments where you can now take a look at
the same watershed, and you can see where the catchments that are impacted by the 303D
listed streams, or by the water quality.
[24:18] Looking at it on a map like this, it makes a lot more sense to the folks that
we're working with, and to the people on the ground and our partners to show how projects
within those catchment areas can impact, or which ones may impact the water quality in
particular to the water quality issue. Thanks again to EPA for that.
[24:48] Looking at the other watershed condition indicators, there are many many sources of
information for data and tools out there. Last week, I went to the science in your watersheds
sites at USGS has. It has a link to, of course, the NAWQA Program that
p.7 is the national water quality assessment program.
You can find links to the SPARROW model, and to WARP model.
[25:23] It's just a lot of information depending on what you already know about your data or
about your watershed and what other tools you may need. Also, the EPA, the WATERS, which
is the watershed assessment tracking and environmental result system, it contains lot of handy tools
for people to use.
[25:47] and to be able to model their watersheds, if you have tried to surf your watershed,
it has very specific localized information as well as a list to potential partners, people
who are interested in helping out with the watershed restoration. On their own, what
interests there are, what their specific areas of interest is or particular reach of stream,
or particular attribute that maybe causing that.
[26:23] The last one I have here is the TerrainWorks, the TerrainWorks, or NetMaps I guess it's
also referred to. It contains a lot of really important tools as far as fish habitat mapping,
road analysis. It contains links to great analysis, the great geomorphic road analysis
and inventory package.
[26:51] This is a tool developed by the Forest Service that really helps hone in on where
the...so what it does is looks at the DEMs and looks at road systems. It can track pretty
accurately the high impact areas of allowing sediment into a stream.
[27:15] If you're trying to figure out where we should do road work, you can take a look
at those potential high impact areas and focus your efforts there. Again, it gives you a
little road map on where to do the most work. Partners find that very, very valuable.
[27:31] As I said earlier, the data availability varied quite a bit as our areas. There are
areas that are data rich, and areas that are data poor. Consistent as the rule set is across
the United States to do these watershed condition assessments, the results vary also. We have
to keep that at the back of our mind as we're looking at all this data.
[28:01] Quick summary, for the first time, we have a nationwide tool to systematically
implement watershed restoration. We focused on partnerships. They are essential to the
success of the WCF. As I said, communication tools are the key.
[28:22] We also recognize that the WCF is not perfect. There are questions about the
indicators. How the management of the forest systems lands can actually impact the indicators
whether or not you can see that result. We believe it will improve over time as we get
used to it, and we begin to better understand its true applicability.
[28:50] Looking into the future, as I said, WCF is focused pretty heavily on the aquatic
aspects. We would like to spend a little more time, a little more energy on the terrestrial
aspect of the watershed restoration. Even doing veg management or for doing work in
the upland, the waste in the water can impact the health of the stream and has say over
the health of the whole watershed. p.8
[29:21] We need to get a better understanding of that. We're going to continue to implement
that and improve the WCF program. Also, right now, the field is undergoing a limited reassessment
of some watersheds, so doing that step A all over again. That's being done with improved
information and information of some data sets that didn't exist five years ago.
[29:48] In some areas, we've had pretty dramatic fires between five years ago and now, that
impact the health of the watershed. There's a number of reasons why a forest would decide
to do this reassessment. That's occurring now, and it should be completed by the end
of February 2016.
[30:13] That's my talk for today. Again, I want to emphasize that the way that we can
look at what needs to be done on the balance. The impact the restoration work has on the
aquatic species, it's made fundamentally easier and more efficient through the use of the
NHD and the WBD and the GIS tools that we have available to us.
[30:54] Are we ready to take questions?
Jeff: [30:56] Yes, we are, Mike. Thanks a lot. Good
presentation. I appreciate that. We're going to turn it over to Sue Buto and Alan Rea to
talk about some of the questions that have been coming in. Al, you might want to lead
us by reminding people how they might be able to ask questions through the question and
answer feature of the Webex.
Alan Rea: [31:16] OK, sure. This is Al. I'll explain
that. On your screen, where you're seeing Mike's desktop, if you put your cursor up
near the top, you should see a menu that will pull down. There's a Q&A button on that menu.
It will open up a little panel. You can type your question in there. Sue and I will be
viewing those, and we will ask those questions of Mike and get him to answer it.
[31:50] Sue, you've got one queued up and ready to go.
Susan Buto: [31:52] I do. Charlie Palmer is asking, does
the WCF include Alaska?
Mike: [31:59] Yes, it does. We have two national
forests in Alaska, the Chugach and the Tongass. Both of those have gone through the Watershed
Condition Framework assessment.
Susan: [32:13] Thank you.
Mike: [32:15] Just real quick, should I hit the
stop sharing button, and we'll go back? Al: [32:21] No. We don't really need to, but yeah,
you can go ahead.
Mike: [32:24] We'll leave this up. That's fine.
Al: [32:28] Yeah. It depends on if someone asked
a question, specifically about a slide, so just keep it there for a sec. Another question
came in asking about, that some HUC12s p.9
are not true watersheds. Are you taking this into consideration in using the HUC12s for
the basis of your assessments?
Mike: [33:01] I'm not sure. Maybe. Are they speaking
of where it may be along a lake, and there's sometimes a number of smaller watersheds that
are grouped together into a considered a subwatershed. I'm afraid I'm not understanding that question.
Al:
[33:20] Right. The question is from Mark Webber. Mark, do you want to hit star six? You can
unmute yourself if you want to explain more. He's talking about HUC12s that have upstream
HUC12s from them. The HUC12 itself is in a full watershed.
Mike:
[33:55] Right. That really comes into almost treating that watershed as a priority watershed.
There are a number of instances where, for example, water quality impact or how the water
quality is in the downstream watershed is really because of the upland or the upstream
watershed water quality. Areas where there is a lot of mining are like that.
[34:26] The legacy mining that has occurred way upstream, that impact can be felt going
downstream quite a way. There's a minimal amount of work that can be done in that downstream
watershed to improve that water quality. Because again, the impact originates upstream.
[34:52] It all comes into when you choose your priority watershed, you try to figure
out, "Hey, can we actually improve the condition of this watershed? And can we come up with
projects to make this watershed healthier and move it up to the next condition class?"
[35:11] In a case like that where you have upstream impact and if it's outside your area
of focus, then I would say that may not be your best choice for your priority watershed.
Susan: [35:28] Another question, Mike. Is the framework
based on a snapshot of the WBD circuit 2011? If so, do you refresh or plan to refresh those
data to capture updates in the dataset?
Mike: [35:46] The original was the 2011 dataset.
I'm aging myself there. There was an update done, I believe, in 2013 or late '14. Actually,
with that, there was some additional work done along the Canadian border at that time.
[36:12] The watersheds went from 15,064 up to 15,087. Those new watersheds are on the
map of new watersheds. They had to be assessed for the first time by that national forest.
We announced that just a few months ago about updating the WBD again.
[36:37] We found a very similar results based on some additional clarification down along
Mexico. We do update them. However, the watersheds change or modified. We do update the scoring
of those, either by scoring "a new watershed" or by assessing that new watershed.
p.10
Al: [37:08] We've got another question, and I'm
not completely sure if I understand it, but I'll see if you do, Mike. Are the different
activities ranked by use, such as active versus passive uses in comparing the type of activities
on the watershed?
Mike: [37:33] No. Maybe it's comparing rank on the
uses, no. That level of characterization is not done as far as impact to the watershed
itself.
Al: [37:55] We haven't got any other questions
in. If anybody has more questions, go ahead and ask them. I have one that I'll ask.
[38:07] It looks like your assessment units basically are the 12 digit HUCs. Are you finding
that those are the right size for what you want to do, or do you find there is need for
smaller units? I know that for some purposes, people have been talking about making smaller
units than the 12 digit HUCs.
Mike: [38:26] That's a great question. We get that
question a lot as far as how do we decide on a specific area. Going back to why we initiated
the WCF to begin with is that we needed to show that what we were doing on the ground,
the Forest Service, what the management was doing on the ground was able to improve the
condition.
[38:53] What was decided was that the 12 digit HUCs which range between or 10 to 40 thousand
acres. That was the right management unit size to do this. There are instances where
actually people like to look at larger areas. For example, when you're talking about fish
or looking at a danger or threat to fish and fish passage, a lot of that tends to be more
of the 5th level HUC so a combination of a few.
[39:28] Looking at a larger landscape, because that's the focus area that you would see for
that species. There is a give and take, certainly down at the catchment level. Smaller than
the HUC12, there are certain areas where maybe some road work or some abandoned mine land
work, would make a lot more sense to look at to see that smaller level.
[39:56] I think overall, aside from certainly rationale on both sides, the HUC12 seems to
be a real good size for us. The work that we can do over that three to seven year period,
it can be focused in that area. That seems to be a size that Congress or people that
we're reporting to, they accepted it, and they accepted that size as our area. That
actually means something to them.
[40:31] Bottom line now is HUC12s are where we are, there are times when we need to look
bigger or smaller. But overall, the 12s are where we are.
Al: [40:43] Great, thanks.
Jeff [40:53]: W e'll cut off the questions here
and move on to the next presentation. I will point out that Mike's presentation will be
available both as recording and as a transcript and as Power Point slides to you in a few
days or weeks. p.11
[41:01] Keep an eye on the USGS NHD website. That's just simply nhd.usgs.gov. Click on
the Hydrography Seminar Series, and look for seminar five, and you'll find all the information
you need for that.
[41:17] We're going to come up to our first lightning talk which is by David Richey on
preserving high quality riparian vegetation. We'll give a chance for David to get his slides
going there. While we're doing that, I'll tell you a bit about David.
[41:32] He's a senior GIS Analyst at the Lane Council of Governments in Eugene, Oregon.
He has practiced spatial data analysis for 20 years with a research and professional
focus on agricultural and riparian landscapes.
[41:45] His current work focuses on the McKenzie Voluntary Incentives Program, a payment for
ecosystem services project protecting and restoring riparian vegetation, for the Eugene
Water and Electric Board. David, we see your slides.
David Richey: [41:57] Do you hear my voice? Al:
[41:58] We hear your voice.
David: [42:00] Excellent.
Al: [42:01] Take it away for the next five minutes.
David: [42:03] All right. Again, my name is David
Richey, I'm with Lane Council of Governments. Today, I'm talking about delineating an eligibility
area for the McKenzie Voluntary Incentives Program or VIP.
[42:15] The VIP is a payment for ecosystem services riparian protection and restoration
program. It's supported by multiple agency and community partners, and it's focused on
engaging and enrolling private landowners in non compulsory actions that support multiple
desired landscape functions with a focus on preserving drinking water quality.
[42:43] One element of the program is determining the eligibility or program area, those lands
that are most significant for protecting water quality and riparian function. The McKenzie
River provides drinking water to over 200,000 people in the Eugene Springfield area.
[42:52] We had a number of goals for delineating the program area. The first goal was to have
it be credibly science based. For that, we turned to the Nature Conservancy's active
river area model as a peer reviewed GIS model for characterizing the landscape.
[43:11] The second goal is that it's easily explained to lay audience. Again, this is
an enrollment program for private landowners. We wanted to be able to describe the program
areas, the area of dynamic connection and interaction between the water and the land
through which it frequently or occasionally flows.
p.12
[43:28] This isn't specifically tied to flood events or flood frequencies. We wanted the
delineation method to be repeatable in other watersheds. The model depends primarily on
nationally available NHD and USGS DEM datasets.
[43:47] Lastly, we wanted the program to be useful for analysis and evaluation. The model
defines or identifies a broad set of landscape elements rather than solely focusing on the
riparian area. As part of its output, the model produces a cost surface, not necessarily
a hard boundary increasing the flexibility of the output and its use.
[44:15] Again, this is the Nature Conservancy's active river area model. It estimates the
riparian area as well as other landscape components, and it's not tied to a specific flood extent.
[44:27] In the use of the NHD and the USGS DEM, in particular it relies on the stream
order attribute, which is not available throughout the US, at least at the high resolution level.
Next month's the seminar might shed some light on that.
[44:45] The code is open, by which I don't mean it's open source but rather you can dig
into the code. It isn't password protected, and the model is very rapid to deploy. It's
well documented using known ESRI tools.
[45:00] Conceptually, the watershed is divided up into three longitudinal sections of headwaters,
streams and rivers from these, three functional landscape types are identified. The active
river area, wet flat areas, and material contribution areas. Again, the slope based cost surface
model is used to identify these.
[45:21] Cost surface is calculated in a cellular basis, moving away from the water feature
accumulating values as it goes. The values for each cell that are accumulated are generated
by multiplying the slope times the distance traversing each cell. You could think of this
as a proxy for water friction or for flood extent.
[45:43] The model is calibrated by comparing it against known flood datasets such as FEMA
flood zones or if you have actual records of flood occurrence.
[45:54] In our work, we calibrated the model against a provisional USGS dataset describing
the Holocene floodplain from Rose Wallack. Thresholds are set to cover the majority of
the reference flood extent, and the results an active river area will exceed the reference
feature in some areas and not in others.
[46:16] Other landscape types, such as the wet flat areas and so on, are calibrated against
other known reference datasets. Again, for this program, because it's a riparian protection
program, we focused on the riverine and stream delineations for program implementation.
p.13
[46:33] The model produces, again, these different landscape types, which we're looking at using
future work with the Voluntary Incentives Program. The active river area is the focus
of our program currently as it sets the program eligibility area for the VIP.
[46:50] On the left there, you can see a more full suite of the head water, stream, river
categories by the three landscape types. Then, on the right there is the actual VIP initial
program boundary.
[47:07] Again, this is a project that's been going on since 2010, 2011. We hope it continues
on for years. It's supported by multiple partners. You can see their names here. And that's about
it for this lightning talk. Thank you so much for your attention.
Jeff: [47:24] OK, David. Thanks a lot. Good. Once
again, David's slides, this recording will be available in the next few days or weeks,
and you'll be able to access that through the nhd.usgs.gov website. Click on Hydrography
Seminar Series.
[47:42] We're going to go right to our next lightning talk, which is by Curtis Price.
This is about streamgage drainage area boundaries. As Curtis sets up here, I'll tell you a little
bit about Curtis.
[47:54] He's a Physical Scientist and GIS Specialist with the U.S. Geological Survey.
He has been supporting GIS applications as a member of USGS Enterprise GIS team for more
than twenty years. His research interests include raster data analysis and landscape
characterization.
[48:11] If we have time after Curtis' talk, then you could ask questions to both David
and Curtis. We're ready to take it away, Curtis. We see your slide, and welcome to the lightning
talk. Curtis Price:
[48:28] OK. Thank you very much. I'm going to talk to you today a little bit about a
project we got started last year, leveraging national datasets that now exist. I just want
to say it's a really exciting time for all of us to be involved in GIS, because these
national datasets are starting to allow us to do things we never could do before.
[48:48] I think the talks we've heard so far today really push that forward. I'm going
to switch this slide right now and see if it changes for everyone else.
Jeff: [48:56] Yeah.
Curtis: [48:59] This is based on the Watershed Boundary
Dataset, which is a national seamless watershed polygon fabric that covers the entire continental
United States and Alaska and Hawaii, and a little bit of some other places, too.
[49:18] As was mentioned before, these watersheds aren't cumulative watersheds. Sometimes they
flow from one to the other. They're not all what we call headwater watersheds. Some are
coastal. They have all kinds of different things.
p.14
[49:32] One thing that's very wonderful about this dataset is that it's based on, it has
local input in terms of where those lines get drawn. Because sometimes the DEM isn't
the whole story sometimes some local things going on that make a difference.
[49:45] This data has been looked up by a lot of people that know about the landscape.
When we use it with the rest of the NHD, it can be very powerful.
[49:58] Our problem here is we have drainage areas and watershed boundaries and we need
them all the time. They're critical to analysis, all kinds of hydrologic data. I work within
the water theme at USGS, so this is especially important to us.
[50:12] Delineations are done in different ways across the country, but we have this
nationally consistent Watershed Boundary Dataset boundary that we can work with. If we could
have a nationally consistent way of building watersheds from our USGS gages, that would
be really great. It will benefit everyone that uses our data. That's why we're doing
this.
[50:36] Here's the issue. We have a watershed. We have that watershed, it could have developed
up a lot of ways. We might have gotten it from DEM. Something else, we might have delineated
it off quad sheets, then we have the watershed boundaries, and we're not quite lined up on
them.
[50:52] That's a problem, because if the gage was right on the WBD boundary that would be
really great, so we can't do that. We want to somehow put these together and down near
the tie point here, make a watershed then use the boundary of the Watershed Boundary
Dataset above that.
[51:09] We have these ingredients. We have our watershed we got from somewhere. We have
these WBD watersheds that exists. Then we have pour points that we're using that were
developed using NHD plus. I urge you to come to the January meeting to learn more about
what's happening recently with NHD plus it's pretty exciting.
[51:26] Here are some real life watersheds. I live down here. That's me that’s my office
right there anyway. There's a gage, USGS gage right here. It isn’t quite on the boundary.
What I'm going to do is I'm going to zoom in down here to this area in here, which is
about two miles across.
[51:51] We're zoomed in here. Here's our USGS gage right here. It has it's own watersheds
that may look like. There's some old lineup. Say we did our watershed with DEM or something.
They may not line up exactly.
[52:04] What we want to do is get that. What we do is we do delineation. We take that delineation.
We clip it to the bottom hydrologic unit. You can on the left there's one hydrologic
unit. There's a from and a to code. On the right, we have another hydrologic unit with
a from and a to code and we want to put them together.
p.15
[52:23] The easiest way to find out where that's going to be is to actually use the
elevation derived location to define the pour point, which is the point at which this watershed
in the left flows to the watershed on the right.
[52:35] We had this clipped area, and then we use this point to grab this whole HUC12.
Let me go on to the next slide, you'll see what that looks like. You'll see this purple
line here and it shows our original thing. Then we basically, once we got to the boundary,
we'd grab the rest of it.
[52:54] Now, we have these two watersheds. That's our starting point. Then what we can
do is, we can find all these blue lines here, or all the HUC12's upstream. Here are the
two down here we were working with. These two, right here.
[53:08] Here's our little watershed, and our big one here. Then we can add, using the ToHUC
attribute that's on every single HUC12, and everything upstream, like this. Until we have
our wonderful put together watershed, that is a true complete watershed.
[53:22] Then we pass it around to the water science centers to go ahead and...We have
offices around the country. They check them out, and make sure they're OK. That's my little
timer going off there.
[53:33] Basically, we get them reviewed. Then when we're done with that, we can go ahead
and load them up into the new data model that's going to be part of NHD. The fact that we
have these national data sets makes it possible. These gage polygons will be available through
the NHD. That's public and a batch download.
[53:51] We're still getting them completed, and we aim to provide a web service. For example,
you're looking at a gage record on NWIS web, which is our service that serves our USGS
surface water data. You can click a box and get the polygon. That's the idea.
[54:09] That's what I have today. Hopefully, we can do more about this later. I recommend
the January talk to you, because it really focuses in on some of the raw data that's
going to make even more analysis like this possible.
Jeff:
[54:24] Good, Curtis. Geat job. Thanks, lots of good information there. Once again, Curtis'
slides will be available through the hydro seminar series website at nhd.usgs.gov. This
whole session has been recorded, so you'll be able to watch the recording. You'll also
be able to read the transcript, so look for that.
[54:45] Also, as Curtis mentioned, we have an upcoming presentation January 21st, on
high resolution NHDPlus, which is able to do a lot of things for us, as the program
continues to produce more and more rich data on water in the United States. There is a
poll question that we have about your opinion of this presentation, and we appreciate if
you would fill out that poll, so we can find out what we can do better in the future.
p.16
[55:16] Tell us what worked about this, what didn't work about it, and then also suggestions
for what we can do in the future. We're looking for your ideas about topics we can present.
Please give those to us, and we'll line those up for the future.
[55:31] If you're doing interesting work, involving hydrography, and involved in the
NHD, WBD, or NHDPlus, please help our seminar series, and offer to give a presentation.
With that, any final comments, or questions, or answers from Sue or Al? Anything that is
left hanging? Al:
[55:56] No, I don't think we had any additional questions.
Jeff:
[56:00] OK, good. All right. With that then, we'll wrap it up for today. We're just a few
minutes short of the hour. Thanks for attending, and we look forward to having you attend our
next session. Thanks.