Meeting Notes, September 15, 1998

1.  Introductions, Approval of Agenda
2.  Agency Updates- New Activities
3.  Committee Activities Followup
4.  GIS/LIS 98 Conference Planning
5.  Committee Administrative Procedures

United States Geological Survey: USGS has been working on an ‘Automated Watershed Characteristics Program’ for the Minnesota Department of Transportation. The program was originally developed in Arc/INFO and is now being converted to ArcView. Using the 1995 state watershed GIS file, a user can click on a point (for example, a sampling site) in a minor watershed and the system can accumulate information on the upstream area, including stream length, stream slope, and lake area. Within the minor watershed it calculates the upstream drainage area of the point within the minor watershed using the 1:24,000 Digital Elevation Model data; outside of the primary minor watershed boundary it calculates the areas of all upstream minor watershed based on the 1995 state watershed coverage.

USGS also reported on the availability of a full statewide dataset to accumulate minor watersheds within a major watershed.

COMMITTEE ACTIVITIES FOLLOWUP

Watershed Subcommittee:

Proposal to Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) for a Watershed Basemap Update Project: The proposal to fund a statewide watershed update project which was submitted by USGS to the FGDC in February, 1998, was not selected for funding. USGS staff feel that it would be worthwhile to resubmit the proposal in the next funding cycle, with some modifications, based on additional agency commitments, and perhaps including the lakeshed updates, which were not an issue at the time the proposal was submitted.

Basins98 (DNR Major/Minor Watershed File, 1998 Updated Version): DNR has been making updates to the Basins95 data, on a 100K-quad sheet basis. All currently identified updates have been made. What remains to be done is to join the 100K pieces into a full statewide file, and to make any edits and reconciliations made necessary by the join routine. December is a likely completion date. DNR has decided to create Basins98 in the same format as Basins95—that is, as a minor watershed file. There was some talk of reformatting the file structure to accommodate lakeshed information before Basins98 was completed. This, however, will be left to the next round of updates.

Lakeshed Project (DNR): DNR has received $400,000 for two fiscal years to delineate and automate lakesheds. Since Metropolitan Council is also going to be doing lakeshed work, DNR met with Met Council staff to develop a work plan. The two agencies have agreed to cooperate on the projects to avoid duplicating efforts. Jim Solstad of DNR Waters is the project manager, assisted by Bob Potocnik and a GIS Specialist who will be hired specifically for the project. DNR will first identify their internal needs, then have a meeting in early October to solicit needs from other agencies.

DNR plans to collect whatever lakeshed delineations (digital or non-digital) which have already been done, and to create new lakeshed delineations in an automated fashion using the Digital Elevation Model data at 1:24,000. The digitally-created lakesheds will be distributed to DNR Waters field staff for review, and to other people who have hand-delineated lakesheds, for comparison and for evaluation of the digital technique. The United States Geological Survey and St. Cloud State University report a wide variation in the validity of the digitally-created basins they have tried in the past: it is possible that some of the worse cases were done with early DEM data, which is now being revised. USGS is working to complete the conversion of all Level 1 DEMS to Level 2 DEMS—this should in itself improve the quality of the delineations in those areas.

Lakeshed Project (Metropolitan Council): The Metropolitan Council has $67,000 available for lakeshed work. Their ultimate goal is to create a seamless file of lakesheds for metropolitan area watershed modeling. Their first area of focus would be the Minnesota River. Met Council has met with DNR to compare their priorities in the metropolitan area with those of DNR. They would like to see all of the automation done in one place (DNR). Part of the DNR/Met Council cooperation will include developing and documenting methodologies. Metropolitan Council will attempt to get data from local governments and institute a local review process. One problem is landlocked basins or basins where the flow pattern is different depending on the water level or the intensity of a rain event.

Watershed Update Procedure Write-up (LMIC): The Watershed Update Procedure Guidelines written last year by this subcommittee have yet to be turned into a final product. LMIC staff will try to complete this and to produce a document suitable for being published as a brochure or as a WEB document.

Surface Water Subcommittee:

DNR Budget Initiative on Surface Water Layer: The proposal to develop a 1:24,000, NHD-compatible surface water layer using the MnDOT Basemap Hydrography and National Wetlands Inventory as a basis for the rivers and lakes, respectively, is still included in the DNR’s Budget Initiative. The proposal still needs to survive more internal review; surviving that, it would be reviewed by Office of Technology and Department of Finance, before inclusion in the Governor’s budget.

Status of DNR enhanced 1:24,000 hydrography layer development: DNR Fisheries has contributed another $10,000 into the effort to create an enhanced 1:24,000 hydrography database. Work is being contracted with St. Cloud State University Spatial Analysis Research Center. Once this is expended an estimated quarter of the state (about 600 quads) will be completed with Level 1 1:24,000 hydrography. This does not include the work done by Mankato State in the Minnesota River Basin: it is expected that with some conversion this data would also be applicable. DNR continues to look for funds to complete more of this work on a piecemeal basis in case the larger funding packages are not approved.

Status of National Hydrography Dataset (NHD) verification at MPCA: MPCA continues to do National Hydrography Dataset (1:100,000) data development for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the United States Geological Survey. MPCA has completed the ‘Visual Pass’ processing for all of the 7.5-minutes quads in the state, and have returned the processed data to the USGS for loading into the ‘Feature Object Database (FOD).’ MPCA expects to see some converted data from USGS in October, probably beginning with an Iowa test data set, with Minnesota data to be following. USEPA is distributing an ArcView demo describing the NHD. This committee will probably want to see it at some point.

In addition, MPCA has the possibility of receiving some funding under the Clean Water Act, which can be applied toward the development of the 1:24,000 Hydrography Layer. MPCA is particularly interested in moving the 1:24,000 enhanced hydrography data set into NHD format, since MPCA must report to EPA in that format. Current thoughts around this funding are to use it as a pilot to convert a portion of the Mankato State data and a portion of the DNR data though to NHD format.

National Hydrography Dataset Model – ESRI Conference: Robert Maki (DNR) and Mark Olsen (MPCA) attended NHD sessions at the national ESRI Conference in July. It is still unclear how ESRI is planning to implement the NHD. Tools to fully implement NHD in Arc/INFO 7 continue to be cumbersome—placement of point and line information on top of the NHD would have to be done using dynamic segmentation, which is time-consuming to update. This is currently true of any of the models involving line and point data. Arc 8, being feature-based and more integrated, may contain a solution, but will not be available for some time. The basic enhancements to the 1:24,000 hydrography data which are now being done in Minnesota – i.e., establishing basic connectivity, still appear to be a necessary first step to developing any hydrography data model. The Minnesota Department of Transportation is currently involved in Project 181- a Basemap Enhancement Project. This uses ORACLE/SDE technology and deals with linear referencing in a different way, without using dynamic segmentation. This committee needs to continue to talk to MnDOT since they have the most experience with this type of referencing.

Surface Water Subcommittee Year-End Status Report: Status report was submitted to committee members at the end of June. This is not a polished document but a recapitulation of major discussions we had last year – and a springboard for this year. Maeder would like to do one more edit of this report and would like comments back by October 10. At the end of this year (June, 1999) we anticipate publishing a more complete report.

GIS/LIS CONFERENCE PREPARATION

This committee’s abstract for a session on hydrography has been accepted. This is for one 25-minute presentation in a session entitled ‘Hydrography, Soils, and Land Use.’ Susanne Maeder will do the presentation. Governor’s Council members will staff the Governor’s Council booth – other volunteers are welcomed. The group decided that a one-page handout on the NHD and what we are trying to do would be a good idea. This handout could include links to certain WEB sites. There is also the possibility of taking the NHD’s demo to the conference on a laptop, either at the LMIC or the Governor’s Council booth. We will look at the demo and see if it is appropriate.

In addition, there is a full session focusing on the activities of the Governor’s Council on Geographic Information. Each Subcommittee will deliver a short report on what they are about. Mark Olsen will do the Hydrography presentation.

COMMITTEE PROCEDURES

Committee members annotated a potential list of work tasks for the year. It was decided that the work would be done as one committee this year, rather than splitting into a Surface Water Subcommittee and a Watershed Subcommittee. Small working groups can still split off for a meeting or two, as needed. Mark Olsen of MPCA, as a new member of the Governor’s Council on Geographic Information, agreed to chair the Hydrography Committee this year. Susanne Maeder will continue to co-chair the committee.

ATTENDEES:

Ann Banitt, U. S. Army Corps of Engineers
Robert Bixby, Spatial Analysis Research Center, St. Cloud State University
Pete Cooper, U.S. Dept of Agriculture, Natural Resources Conservation Service
Mark Ebbers, Department of Natural Resources, Fisheries Section
Joe Gibson, Department of Natural Resources – Waters
Blaine Hackett, SRF Consulting
Leigh Harrod, Metropolitan Council
Steve Kloiber, Metropolitan Council
Susanne Maeder, Land Management Information Center, Minnesota Planning
Les Maki, Department of Natural Resources – Management Information Systems
Mark Olsen, Minnesota Pollution Control Agency
James Piegat
Chris Sanocki, United States Geological Survey, Water Resources Division
Ron Wencl, United States Geological Survey, National Mapping Division

Notes prepared by: Susanne Maeder, LMIC