CICEET Progress Report for the period 3/01/08 Through 8/31/08

Project Title: Planning for Superior Coastal Communities
Principal Investigator(s): Sue O’Halloran
Project Start Date: September 1, 2007
Report compiled by: Amy Eliot and Sue O’Halloran, Project Coordinators

Figures

Figure 1

Figure 2

Figure 3

Figure 4

2) Create a minor watershed map showing existing impervious surface and projected impervious surface based on 100% build-out of current zoning.

3) Provide background information and latest research to local planners on how land cover and use impacts runoff and water quality.

4) Attendance at full and subcommittee planning meetings and as appropriate throughout the planning process.

Tasks to meet objectives
1) Obtain reports for natural resource element in existing County Plan

2) Obtained USDA Forest Service HUC watersheds. The minor sub-watersheds will be revised to fit within the HUC boundaries.

3) Use materials from NEMO and the Center for Watershed Protection for background information.

4) Use examples from impervious surface and forest cover map to show committee the types of analysis that will be done (See Figure 1) . Meet with Douglas County Zoning and Planning Administrator and Northwest Regional Planning Commission Senior Planner to coordinate our project with their overall planning process. Attend planning committee meetings.

Progress on Tasks
1) We obtained a draft of the natural resources element of Douglas County's Comprehensive Plan in August 2008 from the Northwest Regional Planning Consultant. We are currently filling in gaps by compiling additional and more detailed natural resource data layers.

2) Ground-truthing was completed this summer and the current impervious surface layer has been finalized.

The minor sub-watersheds are being revised to fit within the USDA Forest Service HUC boundaries.

3) Introduction to watershed planning and visual quality was presented on board the LL Smith to the members of the planning committee (See Figure 2, Figure 3, and Figure 4).

A formal presentation giving examples and more detail about the land use/cover analysis that we are compiling for this project was given at a comprehensive planning meeting.

4) Meetings with the Senior Planner to discuss our presentation topics, scheduling, and data transfer and coordination.

Meetings with natural resource element sub-committee to assist with development of their goals and objectives.

Difficulties
1) Locating and accessing a variety of databases and combining them into a single database for the county.

2) Ground truthing identified an additional land-cover category of transitional agriculture lands that had to be digitized separately from agricultural lands.

3) Progress is slow due to the limited background the majority of the group has about watersheds, hydrology, and land use impacts on water quality. We feel they need to understand the basic concepts before moving into the more detailed analysis.

4) We continue to work at aligning our goals and schedules with the planning committee's overall timeline.

Data Generated to date
We continued to digitize the building foundation boundaries, open lands, and impervious surfaces within the project area from high resolution aerial imagery provided by Douglas County. During this time we loaded digitized land cover data onto a laptop connected to a GPS unit and site verified the aerial observations. We completed the digitizing of the building foundation boundaries, open lands, and impervious surfaces within Douglas County.

We merged the previously digitized timber harvest data from the Lake Superior Comparative Analysis Project into the open land data to differentiate agriculture, transitional agriculture, and timber harvests that are regenerating forest over time.

We in the process of incorporating the watershed delineations developed by the US Forest Service into the delineations developed for the Lake Superior Comparative Analysis Project. This process will make further breakdowns of subwatershed boundaries in alignment with "accepted" subwatershed boundaries for the State of Wisconsin and will then be more broadly accepted and comparable within the State and Federal agencies.

Project Objectives for Next Reporting Period

Describe technical and non-technical objectives
Technical objectives

• Compilation of natural resource data layers
• Revise minor watershed boundaries to fit within USDA Forest Service HUC’s
• Complete impervious surface build-out analysis for minor watersheds
• Calculate land cover coefficients for each major land cover type
• Finalize analysis of open and forested land cover by minor watershed
• Meet with key county staff to facilitate transfer of data files county forestry and land records departments as completed
• Conduct hydrologic analysis of several minor watersheds that are representative of conditions in the county.

Non-technical objectives

• Compile and present detailed information on county natural resources, watershed delineations and impervious surfaces to natural resources sub-committee.
• Assist with the identification of representative watersheds that will be used in hydrologic analysis and alternative growth scenarios.
• Introduce socio-economic and sustainable development information to full committee.
• Discussion of the nomination of the St. Louis River estuary for designation as a National Estuary Research Reserve and inclusion of these resources in the natural resource element.

Work Plan to Meet Objectives

• Continue to use NEMO format to convey more detailed watershed-based information on land cover, impervious surface amounts, build-out scenario and percentages of forest cover and open lands within major and minor watershed boundaries.
• GIS analyses will include: updated forest cover, revised watershed boundaries, sensitive areas analysis
• Watershed-scale analyses will include hydrologic, vulnerability analysis (minimum of 3 watersheds) and impervious surface build-out analysis.
• Attend natural, agricultural and cultural resource subcommittee meetings and land-use subcommittee meetings, as requested.

Expenditures
Expenditures for this reporting period slightly less than we anticipated and therefore we would like to request a carryover of these funds into year two. Of our total first year budget of $118,749 we have expended $96,157. We are requesting to carryover $22,591 into year two.

What Else?
As mentioned in our previous section (progress on tasks) we are moving more slowly than anticipated due to the timeline of the comprehensive planning committee as a whole. However, now that we are able to work with the subcommittees we expect things to move more quickly.