Arc Hydro River Workshop

Discussion, Day 2, Dec 2, 2010

Tim Bondelid – last 2 days been really phenomenal. There are so many of these things going. One opportunity is to bring order out of chaos. Not reinventing the wheel. Surface water – groundwater interaction link is the great frontier out there. We have to make sure that we get climate issues into here. ET, time series on temperature on rainfall and rainfall patterns. ET is second largest component of a watershed balance. Water resources and water availability.

Ricardo Lopez – we have deviated quite a bit from your question yesterday morning. Botswana, Sri Lanka and … We have the tools and we need a catalog. Stream network plays the role of the HIS catalog – Reachcode has not been killed yet. Can be expanded so that it can be used in other places. HydroID for streams. Regulated HydroID so that everyone can use the same HydroID – separate implementations share this common stream identifier.

Jeff Simley – we need to end up with common flow lines for USA so that we are all using the same ones. When a person in a state or a federal agency finds a stream they put it on the stream map. This is the foundation to the entire endeavor. If somebody has a better flowline we need to find a way to share them. How can people contribute new and better flow lines into a national dataset? We need tools to make that easier for web editing. Processes and forums for stewardship.

Cindy McKay – I think if I were going to try to show progress quickly, it’s a little overwhelming. Cataloging it right now in our minds and see how it relates to every other piece of information. You have to be careful of randomly throwing data onto the internet. Better to wait to put NHDPlus on the ArcGIS.com for the refreshed version of NHDPlus. You may need to go to USGS to document NHD attributes. Arc Hydro River is an amalgamation of lots of different data sources.

Keven Roth – There is a lot of stuff out there already and we need a good way to make it reasonable.

Erin Atkinson – along with cataloging everything that was mentioned. Is Arc Hydro River a data model or is it data?

Dean Djokic – USGS/EPA needs to have its own place to put approved data on ArcGIS.com

Brian Sanborn – I think about providing data services for the fisheries biologists and hydrologists – make the tools into services –

Al Rea – try to keep it very granular, very purposed. Put the data out there and repopulate it with the new data when it becomes available. There are people who could really use this stuff.

Tommy Dewald – every nickel is going into the NHDPlus refresh. We don’t have funds to support this now.

Eddie O’Connor – we need to educate people on how to use LIDAR to the fullest and educate funding entities on the value of LIDAR.

Steve Kopp – there is a seven part series on LIDAR processing in the Geoprocessing Resource Center.

Brian Sanborn – on forest service lands we need the capacity to add information to the base map and reload it to ArcGIS.com

Gray Minton – These discussions are very helpful, but we are starting to add so many elements to the design that it is getting hard to keep everything straight; some of these topics seem almost complex enough to have their own model.  I think we need to establish some typical use cases and determine the needs for these cases (for both tools and data models).  Also, it’s a little unclear where Arc Hydro ends and Arc Hydro River (or Arc Hydro Groundwater) begins.

Jeff Simley –

1.  It is essential that the NHD (high resolution) flow network is accurate.  As it stands, this network has a number of potential errors that must be checked to allow it to function properly as a framework for ArcHydro River and hi res NHDPlus.  This can be done and Paul Kimsey and Keven Roth have an action to work on this.

2.  ArcHydro River needs to actively promote linear referencing as a method to enable the location of water information on the hydrography framework.  More development and education of linear referencing is needed to make this a more common GIS practice.

3.  We need to make sure that the branding of ArcHydro River, ArcHydro, NHD, and NHDPlus are handled so that users can easily identify what these products are and how they relate.

4.  The five layers that have been proposed should be thought of a virtual layers rather than "hard" layers in the traditional ArcMap sense.  It is likely that some of these layers are really just the linkage of information via linear referencing of point, linear, and area events. 

5.  One of the keys to making ArcHydro River a success is the development and use of services to provide data and data analysis.

Prescott Christian -- First let me thank you for including me in the Arc Hydro Rivers Workshop. It has been an incredible experience to hear about all of the things others are doing. Really gets me excited about all of the possibilities. A scaleable network that everyone can use and recognizes as “the” virtual river with features that participate at all scales _GREAT! Going from a blue line (w/flow direction and connectivity) to a system that that includes all of the attributes of a river (flow, cross section, flora & fauna…) is a grand objective. The applications presented, like flood forcasting, is very powerful stuff. Again, I was overwhelmed at the volume and diversity of information that others are collecting.

As for my thoughts... I like the idea of somehow being able to catalog the areas where groundwater / surface water interactions exist. I imagine that relating the geology and soils would be helpful. I was interested to hear from Cindy that our issue of non-contributing areas in the high plains may already be addressed in the NHDPlus Catchments layer. Will look into that further…. I look forward to seeing how this all comes together and thank you again for your part in facilitating this project.

Mauro de Luzio – I assume has been said or included some way in the National Geomorf Data base. The work of David Rosgen

http://stream.fs.fed.us/news/streamnt/pdf/SN_10-96.pdf on Fluvial Geomorphology can provide a lot of input for the definition of the ArcHydro River database dictionary and domains. Also, for the same reason and as far as biology in stream, I

would suggest your students to take a look of the US EPA model Acquatox http://water.epa.gov/scitech/datait/models/aquatox/index.cfm

Modeling of biology in the stream needs primarily historical river management data (i.e. hydromodifications). This should be part of the database model. Do not forget stream evolution. Do not forget diversions. Can we have quick and dirty dimensions (width and depth) of the

NHD stream reaches at the head and junctions? I also suggest to involve the Texas Riparian Association http://www.texasriparian.org/

Eric Hersh -- (1) Services, for data and analysis. We have a good system in place for streamflow, other observations. We’re working on precipitation. What about analytical services to calculate rainfall and snowfall amounts? Could we build a services-based water balance tool? What about other such analysis services? Time of travel; flow path; wetted width; bankfull capacity; sediment flux; nutrient export; pesticides, etc.

(2) ‘Smart’ systems. We’re working on smart grids. There are iPhone apps to adjust your home’s thermostat remotely based on dynamic power pricing. We have supply-side and demand-side smart technologies for power; why not the same for rivers and water? Distributed data provided by citizens- river level, weather stations. Data from agencies- low water crossings, weather alerts, WQ warnings. Just like the whitewater community loves NWIS (flow, water level), other communities could benefit as well: swimmers (bacteria, temperature), fishers (water temp, DO, turbidity), local emergency response (spills), commuters (low-water crossings), water users (water action levels from stream gages, well levels), dynamic water pricing based on flow levels?

(3) Low-hanging fruit. Since we’ve linked flow gages to the network, why not link rain gages to catchments? Others sensors/gages. Enable web services for these sensors- flow, WQ, precip, ET, etc. Impaired segments, longitudinal profiles, gain/loss, contributory area. Further, the EPA watershed delineation tool is awesome. Let’s split the reach at the selected point and get the true drainage area.