9:30 a.m. – noon
Centennial Office Building
Conference Room 301
358 Cedar Street
St. Paul, Minnesota

AGENDA

Approval of Agenda and Last Meeting Minutes

Announcements/Updates

Subcommittee Updates: Watershed, Surface Water

Funding Update: FGDC, LCMR, Other

Discussion: Future Direction

Action Items and Schedule Next Meeting

Approval of Agenda and Last Meeting Minutes: Agenda and minutes for November 4 meeting were approved.

Announcements/Updates:
New Committee Members: Ann Bannitt is the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers representative on this committee. She has most recently been involved in a hydrologic study of the Vermilion River in Dakota County. Andrea Hendrickson attended the meeting for Thomas Martin of MnDOT.

Watershed Subcommittee Update:
November 20 was the first meeting of the subcommitee. Members present identified their watershed-related needs and activities. Maeder had submitted a draft list of questions for the subcommittee to answer during the course of the year. Subcommittee members posed additional questions, and the group proceeded to start answering them.

In brief, the Department of Natural Resources/Division of Waters sees itself as the legal custodian of the data, and is committed to updating the watershed coverage on a regular basis, at least to the 5-digit minor watershed level. DNR is interested in doing updates at a lower level – to sub-basins, lakesheds and ditchsheds, but does not consider it possible given current funding levels. The LMIC Data Clearinghouse should be responsible for archiving previous versions of the digital data set as new updates become available. Submissions of updates from outside parties would go to DNR. DNR needs to decide internally how to handle these administratively. Most changes to the boundary delineations are obvious and can be dealt with quickly. Others may raise questions and need to be negotiated. DNR may want the option of a group meeting of several agencies to resolve these. An update period of every two years is sufficient. Update date and organization need to be tracked within the watershed GIS coverage itself. In order to make the update process as smooth as possible, parties submitting updates should provide basic information to DNR, which will be decided at a future meeting. Procedures for electronic updates also must be enumerated.

Additional questions were raised at the full committee, to add to the watershed issue list:

1. Is the watershed update process passive or active? i.e., are we going to passively wait for updates to trickle in, or will we make a concerted effort to improve 5 digit level delineations and to delineate and automate lakesheds and ditchsheds? Committee members responded that delineating and automating lakesheds and ditchsheds is a massive effort. The original 5 digit watershed delineation in 1979 was accomplished for $50,000 (Not counting subsequent vector automation of this data). Doing lakesheds and ditchsheds would take an order of magnitude more funds.

2. Would it be worthwhile to inventory and collect all current lakeshed and ditchshed delineations (and automated files), evaluate them and ground-truth them?

Lakesheds are delineated for study lakes by DNR and MPCA, among other. The Water Resources Center at Mankato State has done lakeshed and ditchshed work for 13 counties in south-central Minnesota – it is not clear whether the ditchsheds are legal or natural ditchsheds. The Wild Rice Watershed District has also delineated ditchsheds. No proposals have been put forward recently by DNR to do a statewide ditch inventory.

3. The group discussed the use of elevation data such as the Digital Elevation Model (DEM) data to delineate watersheds and lakesheds by an automated process. USGS has almost completed 7.5-minute DEMS for Minnesota. This technique has been used with good success elsewhere in areas of high relief. It is less successful in areas of low relief – these are the areas in Minnesota where any kind of watershed delineation becomes more problematical.

4. The National Weather Service has forecast basins which it uses for snowmelt models. The IHABBS (Integrated Hydrologic Automated Basin Boundary Systems) program is used to generate accurate, integrated and consistent National Weather Service hydrologic basin forecast boundary data sets. The system is maintained by the National Operational Hydrologic Remote Sensing Center, operating under the Office of Hydrology of the National Weather Service. Internet addresses: http://www.nohrsc.nws.gov. ftp://ftp.nohrsc.nws.gov.

The January 7, 1998 meeting of the watershed subcommittee will be used to begin to develop a Watershed Update Guidebook.

Surface Water Subcommittee:
At their first meeting on November 20, 1997, the Surface Water Subcommittee members first identified themselves and identified their needs and activities. The questions relating to the surface water layer revolve around: what do we have? What do we need? And how do we get it? Scale is an important sub-issue of needs.

As a background to understanding what is currently available, Maeder handed out metadata from DNR and LMIC on various current data sets. Mark Ebbers (DNR-Fisheries) and Mark Wald (OSM Associates, formerly of DNR) outlined the DNR work to enhance the 1:24,000 stream linework from the Minnesota Department of Transportation Basemap for fisheries management purposes. Mark Olsen of MPCA described the current USGS/EPA effort to create a National Hydrography Dataset (NHD), which combines the linework of the 1:100,000 USGS DLG Hydrography with the Reach Numbering system used by EPA. It involves Reach Numbering, a permanent feature ID for ease of updating, and is designed to accommodate updates of information from other levels of government. Compound features can be used to aggregate the basic building block, the Reach, into larger features, such as an entire river.

The work that DNR is currently doing to enhance the 1:24,000 hydro data constitutes a ‘level 1’ effort, involving creating a continuously-connected linework. There is a ‘level 2’ which is needed, which involves feature identification and linear referencing to allow various types of applications. Nothing being done in the current level 1 effort appears to be inconsistent with level 2 needs. The task of this committee this year will be to determine what these level 2 needs are, and how consistent we can be with the federal system. Needs for the system include: linework, numbering (permanent feature identifier), capabilities such as networking, and associated attributes.

We need to start by thoroughly understanding what is currently available. The January 7, 1998 Surface Water Subcommittee Meeting will feature presentations from MnDOT on the Hydrography portion of the Basemap project, from DNR on the 1:24,000 hydrography enhancement effort, and by MPCA on the National Hydrography Dataset.

Then we need to collectively nail down the minimum requirements for the data set, create a pilot, and test it. At a minimum we will need one meeting to scope out the minimum physical layout of the data set, and another to discuss numbering. The group also identified the need to develop guidelines for connecting rivers through wetland complexes.

Funding Update:
Near-term funding possibilities include FGDC (Federal Geographic Data Committee) Cooperative/Competitive Grant Program, LCMR (Minnesota’s Legislative Commission on Minnesota Resources), and McKnight Foundation. FGDC proposal announcements are out. Projects would begin October 1, 1998. The projects to be funded are not strictly for data collection: they are more involved in researching solutions to a problem or piloting. LCMR project proposals are due in February, 1998. Projects approved for funding would begin July 1, 1999.

The group will also need to look at a backup strategy. What if no funding can be obtained? Can we have an explicit set of guidelines for updating the 1:24,000 hydrography file so that ANY agency or group doing even a small portion of the state for a specific project would do the work to the same specifications, so that over time we can build up to a consistent, improved statewide data set?

Future Meetings:
SURFACE WATER Subcommittee
Wednesday, January 7, 1998, 10 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
Conference Room 302, Centennial Office Building
658 Cedar Street
St. Paul, Minnesota, 55155

WATERSHED Subcommittee
Wednesday, January 7, 1998, 1:30 – 4:00 p.m.
Conference Room 302, Centennial Office Building,
658 Cedar Street
St. Paul, Minnesota, 55155

HYDROGRAPHY Full Committee
Wednesday, January 21, 1998, 9:30 a.m. – noon
Conference Room 302, Centennial Office Building
658 Cedar Street
St. Paul, Minnesota 55155

ATTENDEES

Mark Ebbers, DNR Fisheries
Ann Banitt, US Army Corps of Engineers
Tim Ogg, Board of Water and Soil Resources
Ken Saffert, City of Mankato
Glenn Radde, DNR Waters
Mark Olsen, MPCA Information Systems Office
Ron Wencl, USGS National Mapping Division
Chris Sanocki, USGS Water Resources Division
Jim Solstad, DNR Waters
Roger Hirschman, USDA - Natural Resources Conservation Service
Mark Wald, OSM
Joe Gibson, DNR Waters
Andrea Hendrickson, Mn Department of Transportation
Susanne Maeder, Land Management Information Center

Meeting Notes by: Susanne Maeder, LMIC