United States Department of Agriculture

Forest Service

US Forest Service National

Riparian Areas Base Map

National Riparian Areas Base Map: Development & Applications Webinar

Wetland Mapping Consortium Webinars

Wednesday October 2nd, 3:00 pm EDT

Sinan Abood, Linda Spencer, Michael Wieczorek & Ann Maclean

Introduction

• Riparian areas are an important natural resource that are rich in biodiversityand ecological and hydrological functions. These ecosystems contain specificvegetation and soil characteristics that play important roles in protecting waterquality and stream ecosystem health and are very responsive to changes inland management activities. Delineating and quantifying riparian areas is anessential first step in monitoring, planning, management, and modeling forthese areas.

• USDA Forest Service supports the development and implementation of anational context framework with a multi-scale approach to define riparian areasutilizing free available national geospatial datasets.

Introduction

• In 2015, the Forest Service Watershed, Fish, Wildlife, Air, & Rare Plants(WFWARP) staff and Rangeland Management & Vegetation Ecology(RMVE) staff funded the development and implementation of the RiparianBuffer Delineation Model (RBDM) to obtain a national inventory of riparianareas.

• This product would inform the Agency on national riparian resource conditionswith multi-scale approach, and support other landscape projects such as theTerrestrial Condition Assessment (TCA), Watershed ConditionClassification (WCC), and Forest to Faucet.

Objectives

• Spatial extent.

• Location.

• Size (multi-scale).

• General land cover composition.

• Cost effective.

• Use available data.

• Technology transfer.

Data

Input Data Sources Type

StreamsWatersheds

USGS National Hydrology Dataset (NHD)http://nhd.usgs.gov/

Required

LakesUSGS National Hydrology Dataset (NHD)http://nhd.usgs.gov/

Optional

National Wetlands InventoryNational Wetlands Inventory (NWI)http://www.fws.gov/wetlands/Data/Data-Download.html

Optional

gSSURGO

Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS)http://soildatamart.nrcs.usda.gov/ or http://websoilsurvey.nrcs.usda.gov/app/HomePage.htm

Optional

Elevation 1m, 2m, 3m, & 10m DEMs

The National Map https://viewer.nationalmap.gov/basic/#startUp Required

Land Cover

National Land Cover Database http://www.mrlc.gov/Cropland Data Layer http://www.nass.usda.gov/research/Cropland/SARS1a.htm

Optional

50-Year Flood Height

50-year flood height value is calculated using Mason (2007) approach utilizing available USGS water gauges at: https://maps.waterdata.usgs.gov/mapper/index.html

Required

NHDPlus 100K - Streams

• No ephemeral streams.• More than 3.1 million mile of streams river.

NHDPlus 100K - Watersheds

• 18 HUC-2 watersheds (orange).• More than 16,000 HUC-10 watersheds (black).

National Wetlands Inventory

gSUURGO• Hydric Rating.• Drainage Class.• Hydrologic Soil Group.• Flood Frequency.

Digital Elevation Model

• 10 meter DEM.

Land Cover, NLCD or CDL

• 30 meter NLCD.

Hydrologic Data

• More than 26,000 USGS gauge.• 7128 gauge have data.• 50-year flood heights values were

calculated per each gauge per region.

50-Year Flood

Mason (2007)

50-Year Flood

• Calculate 50-year flood height values from equation.• Assign 50-year flood values per stream order.

Streams featureclass

Methodology

• Designed for ArcGIS Pro.• On python 3.• RBDM run in computer RAM.• Can utilize high resolution data such as 1

meter DEM.

Methodology

Results

• Riparian areas base map at 100K scale.• 10 meter spatial resolution.

Applications

• Riparian areas land cover map at 100K scale.• 30 meter spatial resolution.

2001

Land Cover 2001-2016

0

10,000,000

20,000,000

30,000,000

40,000,000

50,000,000

60,000,000

70,000,000

Acr

es

2001 2004 2006 2008 2011 2013 2016

Land Cover Change

• Detailed change analysis on national forest scale.

Land Cover

• Riparian areas base map used as a mask.• Subset NAIP imagery.• Develop high resolution riparian areas land

cover.

Road Density

Accuracy

• Accuracy assessment in Hiawatha NF.• Missing streams in NHD (red box).• High hydric soil % (yellow box).• Wetlands digitizing errors (black box).

Model Parameters

Direct impact:

❑ Flood value.

❑ Stream positional inaccuracies.

❑ DEM spatial resolution.

❑ Sampling distance.

Need to be considered:

• Stream classification and stream order.

• Hydrologic data. 50-year vs 100-year debate.

• Watershed scale.

• Inherited errors from input data.

Acknowledgment

• Linda Spencer, U.S. Forest Service - RMVE

• Michael Wieczorek, U.S. Geological Survey - DE MD DC WSC.

• Nathaniel Gillespie, U.S. Forest Service - WFWARP.

• Alix Cleveland, U.S. Forest Service - RMVE.

• Christopher Carlson, U.S. Forest Service - WFWARP.

• Sally Claggett, U.S. Forest Service - S&P

• Andrew LaMotte, U.S. Geological Survey - DE MD DC WSC.

• Lorri Peltz-Lewis, U.S. Forest Service - PSW Research Station.

• David Rugg, U.S. Forest Service - Research & Development

Fore more information & tools download visit

www.riparian.solutions