Minnesota Hydrography

Land of 10,000 Lakes(or so)

Mark OlsenMinnesota Pollution Control

Agency520 Lafayette Road N.St. Paul, MN 55155

mark.olsen@pca.state.mn.us

Presented by:

A Matter of Scale

• 11,842 Lakes > 10 acres

• Over 14,000 when including smaller lakes

• 92,000 miles of stream/river

Growing Public Interest/Concern

• Water quality is highest priority concern

• Environmental Issues– Malformed frogs– Nitrates in Groundwater– Fish kills and consumption advisories– Recreational usage– Hypoxia

• Use of local data

• Access to data and information

Minnesota’s Governor’s Council on Geographic Information

Hydrography Committee

• Inventory and state coordination

• Define the MN hydrography framework

• Coordination with Federal activities

Inventory and State Coordination

• Legacy systems– 25 years of history– Defacto standards

• Distributed authority – Relies on voluntary cooperation

Define MN FrameworkBasic features

• Watershed

• Basin

• Watercourse

• Hydrologic Point of Interest

Basic elements• Definition

• Delineation

• Identification

• Association of events

The Need to Share

• Watershed approach– Environmental issues ignore political

boundaries

• Shared responsibility and authority

St. Croix River Basin:

The Need to Share

• Watershed approach– Environmental issues ignore political

boundaries

• Shared responsibility and authority– Example: Lakefinder

• Single point of access for DNR, MPCA, and MDH data

WWW.DNR.STATE.MN.US/LAKEFIND/INDEX.HTML

Dept of Health - Fish Consumption Advisories

MPCA - Water Quality Data

MPCA - Water Clarity Data

DNR - Recreational Use

DNR - Topographic Map

MPCA Activities

• Hydrography dataset is framework for integration– Standards

“Perch Creek: T.116, 117, 118, R.39”

– Monitoring (STORET)– Permitted dischargers– Assessments (305(b), 303(d))– Funding activities

Reach Indexing Tool

Why We Like It:

• No cost

• Ease of use

• Activities associated to real surface water features - not dependent on locational accuracy or scale

St. Croix River Basin - Indexed Stream Standards

Flow validated data needed to populate missing lake reach IDs

Flow validated data needed to populate missing lake reach IDs

Minnesota Aquatic Life Use SupportMinnesota Aquatic Life Use Support

Basins

Use SupportFully SupportingPartially SupportingNot Supporting

Reach Indexed

305(b) Assessment

Higher Resolution Data

• DNR “Level 1” Hydro - 24K – DLG with lake shorelines from NWI– MPCA funded USGS to research conversion to

NHD• Integration of Wisconsin data

– Ready now to add ID’s and names• NHD delineation rules

• Technical coordination with USGS

This is the End.