Watershed Boundary Dataset (WBD) Applications Workshop

1. Watershed Boundary Dataset (WBD)Applications Workshop NHD/WBD Workshop April 17, 2009 Presenters: Karen Hanson, USGS-UT Milo Anderson, EPA R5 (remotely) Materials provided by: Mark Stanger, DWQ-DEQ, UT Margo Berendsen, WyGISC Ted Geier, USFS Keith Larson, NRCS AZ Dave Brower, NRCS WA Linda Davis, Idaho Dept. Water Resources Dan Wickwire, BLM OR

2. The WBD………. • Defines the aerial extent of water drainage to a point • Establishes a base-line drainage boundary framework, accounting for all land and surface areas • Impartial to any administrative units, special projects, particular program or agency • At a minimum, the hydrologic units must be delineated and georeferenced to USGS 1:24,000-, 1:25,000-, or 1:63,360-scale topographic maps, which meet National Standards for Spatial Data Accuracy (NSSDA) • Digital Orthophoto Quarter Quadrangles (DOQQs) or higher resolution imagery, contours of elevation, stream locations and other relevant data are useful in improving the accuracy or currentness of the hydrologic unit boundaries

3. Establishes hierarchical units of proportionate sizes and numbers per nested 5th and 6th levels Hydrologic Unit Level Name Coding Digits Size (in acres) Number 1 Region 2 2 Sub-region 4 3 Basin 6 4 Sub-basin 8 5 Watershed 10 40,000-250,000 5 to 15 6 Sub-watershed 12 10,000-40,000 5 to 15

5. Attribution - polygon • 8- 10- and 12-digit coding • 8- 10- and 12-digit downstream coding • 10- and 12-digit naming • Size reported as acreage • State(s) that subbasin falls in • Type at 10- and 12-digit (characteristic) • Modifications at 10- and 12-digit • Non-contributingacreage • GNIS # at 10- and 12-digits

6. Attribution - line • Level (1-6) • Linesources • Metadata version

7. www.ncgc.nrcs.usda.gov/products/datasets/watershed

8. Federal Guidelines, Requirements, and Procedures for the National Watershed Boundary Dataset Techniques and Methods 2008 http://pubs.usgs.gov/tm/tm11a3/

9. WBD Delivery of “certified” data http://datagateway.nrcs.usda.gov/

10. Overview of WBD Applications • This dataset provides a consistent framework (size-coding scheme) for local, regional, and national applications to manage, archive, exchange, and analyze data by hydrologic features • The usefulness of hydrologic units in a variety of levels based on natural surface-water flow and topography cannot be underestimated for potentially invaluable analytical and statistical purposes and applications • This workshop will focus on describing a wide range of applications for this data, such as watershed management, water-quality initiatives, watershed modeling, resource inventory and assessment, fire assessment and management, Total Maximum Daily Load, and more…….

11. IDWR-IDAHO • Floodplain Management is using the WBD for HAZUS flood modeling • Dam Safety uses information for determining reservoir capacity input, and with Digitial Elevation Models (DEM’s) to show channel slopes • Water Resources uses it for: • Showing water quantity • Source of water for storage sites • Looking at public drinking water supply sites • Analyzing total maximum daily loads (TMDL’s) and other water quality parameters • Refining and updating other IDWR layers based on watersheds • Administrative boundaries • District boundaries • A common accurate layer to use as a base for identification and analysis • Refining basin and aquifer boundaries prioritized for Aquifer Planning and Management

12. BLM-Idaho • Land use planning • Aquatic species conservation strategy • Watershed enhancement and protection • Watershed analysis and Subbasin assessment • National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) • Watershed analysis • National Marine Fisheries Service Endangered Species Act (ESA) Section7 Consultation Biological Opinion and Magnuson • Population analysis • Programmatic (Watershed, Subbasin, or Basin scale) biological assessments

13. USFS-Idaho • Assess and analyze the direct and cumulative effects of the various forest projects • Road density • Forest Travel Management Planning for determining motorized routes • Number of stream crossings • Equivalent clear cut acres • Watershed vulnerability • Geomorphic integrity

14. NRCS-Washington • Any planning activity that requires hydrologic modeling • Watershed resource inventories and fish distribution • River Basin Studies • Small Watershed Programs • Watershed Protection and Flood Prevention • Watershed Surveys and Planning • Floodplain management studies • Flood insurance studies • Development of watershed plans for mitigation of flood damages; conservation, development, utilization and disposal of water, and conservation and proper utilization of land • Watershed Rehabilitation • Web-based Progress Reporting • Performance Results System (PRS) • Identification of state workload activities and analysis • Conservation Security Programs (CSP) • Rapid Watershed Assessments

15. NRCS-Washington Applying the WBD for Rapid Watershed Assessments • Increases the speed and efficiency generating information to guide conservation implementation, and putting it into the hands of local decision makers • Rapid Watershed Assessments provide initial estimates of where conservation investments would best address the concerns of landowners, conservation districts, and other community organizations and stakeholders • Helps land-owners and local leaders set priorities and determine the best actions to achieve their goal • The assessments are conducted by: • watershed planning teams traveling through each watershed • meeting with landowners and conservation groups • then inventorying agricultural areas • identifying conservation opportunities and current levels of resource management • estimating impacts of these opportunities on the local priority resource concerns

20. BLM-Washington/Oregon • Analysis units for slope impact in regard to wood debris flow potential • Determining rain on snow susceptibility • Estimating peak water flow calculations • Defining riparian management areas • Evaluation and summary of fish habitat restoration capacity • Determination of slope sediment susceptibility

21. EPA-Great Lakes The US Environmental Protection Agency, USEPA, applies the WBD to many facets of their programs. Using Subwatershed (5th-level, 10-digit hydrologic unit) boundaries for Impaired (303d) Waters assessment is one critical application. • Classifying Impaired (303d) Waters by Watershed • Many watersheds that drain into the Great Lakes include areas classified as “impaired waters”. One particular area is called the Betsie-Platte Watershed. This basin was known for a large logging industry in the late 1800s and early 1900s that led to deep sand deposits in the rivers and creeks and roads cut through forests. Attempts at crop farming the cut over land proved largely unsuccessful due to poor soils. The area is known for orchards and vineyards. The watershed has large stretches of State forest and Federal park lands. A majority of the land is forested. Native plant species in the area range from the extremely drought tolerant species to wetland species • The Swamp Milkweed, desired by the Monarch Butterfly as the favorite food source for the larvae • The watershed is home to critical habitat identified by the Nature Conservancy include: Great Lakes Hemlock - Beech - Hardwood Forest, Great Lakes Beachgrass Dune, Great Lakes Shoreline Cattail - Bulrush Marsh, Great Lakes Dune Pine Forest, Great Lakes Beachgrass Dune, Interdunal Wetland. • Critical species identified by the Nature Conservancy and other partners include Prairie Moonwort, Prairie Dunewort, Piping

23. Land Cover: Betsie-PlatteWatershed Size: 812 sq. milesBetween 1996 and 2001, there hasbeen a slight increase in developedland and slight decreases in cultivated land and grassland Result related to Land Cover change

24. Watershed Priorities: • Identified Platte River impairments include fertilizers; human and animal waste; oils, toxic chemicals, and salt; sediment; heated runoff; altered stream; pesticides; bacteria; and channel flow • The watershed has listed impairments for mercury, PCB and chlordane fish consumption advisories for a limited number of waterbodies • The watershed has seen significant erosion at stream crossings • There is significant sedimentation that has occurred in the watershed • Watershed and environmental groups have been undertaking significant projects to protect and restore the watershed. The primary focus of the protection and restoration efforts include: • Improving water quality and Soil Erosion and Sediment Control • Removing manmade drainage features on former farmland to reduce excess storm water runoff • Purchase of easements to protect open space and improve environmental functions • Protecting ecologically sensitive areas like wetlands and their associated forests as well as undeveloped shoreline • Protected sensitive “dune and swale” topography at Sleeping Bear Dunes. The area is recognized by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as “globally rare habitat.” • Remove invasive species and restore dunes in the Greater Point Betsie landscape to benefit the rare natural communities, including Pitcher's thistle, a threatened species • Improve habitat for critical species like the Piping Plover

25. USGS-StreamStats • USGS has partnered with ESRI, Inc. to develop a Web application named StreamStats • This is an integrated Geographic Information System (GIS) application that uses web services, ArcSDE, ArcGIS, and the ArcHydro Tools toA GIS program that determines boundaries of the drainage basins for ungaged sites, measures the physical characteristics of the drainage basins, and solves regression equations to estimate streamflow statistics for the sites • Program allows on the fly computation of parameters necessary to utilize existing and future flood frequency regression equations • Integrates completed 24k products for Utah – Watershed Boundary Data Set (WBD), National Hydrography Data Set (NHD), and Digital Elevation Models (DEM) compiled state-wide or regionally

26. Watershed Boundary Dataset (WBD) added to DEM surface in “walling” technique NHD stream cells subtracted from DEM surface in “burning’ technique

31. NHDPlus-EPA (USGS involvement) • Greatly improved 1:100K National Hydrography Dataset (NHD) • A set of value added attributes to enhance stream network navigation, analysis and display • An elevation-based catchment for each flowline in the stream network • Catchment characteristics • Headwater node areas • Cumulative drainage area characteristics • Flow direction, flow accumulation and elevation grids • Flowline min/max elevations and slopes • Flow volume & velocity estimates for each flowline in the stream network

32. NHDPlus The US Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Water, assisted by the US Geological Survey, has supported the development of NHDPlus to enhance the EPA WATERS application NHDPlus is an integrated suite of application-ready geospatial data sets that incorporate many of the best features of the National Hydrography Dataset (NHD), the National Elevation Dataset (NED), the National Land Cover Dataset (NLCD), and the Watershed Boundary Dataset (WBD) http://www.horizon-systems.com/nhdplus/

34. NHDPlus • TOOLS: • Navigation • upstream main stem, upstream with tributaries, downstream main stem, and downstream with divergences. Any of the four types of navigation may be stopped at a user-supplied distance from the starting point. • Catchment Attribute Allocation and Accumulation Tool • May be used separately or in combination. Takes a user-supplied grid format dataset of one or more landscape attributes and allocates the attributes to the NHDPlus catchments. The accumulation function builds, for each NHDPlus Flowline, the total upstream accumulated values for attributes that have been allocated to either NHDPlus catchments or NHDPlus flowlines • Basin Delineator Tool • Delineates drainage basins for a user-defined set of basin pourpoints. The pourpoints must be located on the NHDPlus network which is defined as the subset of flowlines with known flow direction (i.e. NHDPlus.NHDFlowline.Flowdir = "With Digitized"). The input pourpoints are specified by a basin identifier, an NHD linear reachcode, and a measure along the reach. BasinDelineator returns a shapefile containing basin polygons • Aquatic Exposure Tool • Conducts a geospatial analysis of the NHDPlus stream network to identify potential pesticide use impacts. Based on an initial area of concern and a method for estimating pesticide impact, AquaXpos analyzes the stream network to find places, downstream from potential pesticide use sites, where chemical impact's may exceed a specific level of concern.

35. USGS Stream Gage Network