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A Publication Featuring The Information Services Technology of Maine State Government
| Volume IV, Issue 9 | September 2001 |
By Angela Brockmann and David Kirouac
The Maine Office of GIS (MEGIS) recently completed a pilot project to enhance the digital hydrography data for the State of Maine. Currently, MEGIS is awaiting an anticipated grant from the U.S. Geological Survey to complete the enhancements to the rest of the 1:24,000 scale hydrography GIS data. The pilot project evolved as a result of a subcommittee that was formed by the GIS Technical Committee to coordinate the enhancement efforts. Members of the Hydrography Subcommittee included State and Federal agencies. For a complete list of members, topics and issues discussed, please visit: http://apollo.ogis.state.me.us/news/subnews.htm#hydro.
The subcommittee decided to complete a pilot project for one watershed that would fulfill the common needs of most GIS users within the state, and also fulfill the specifications and standards set by USGS for the high-resolution National Hydrography Dataset (NHD), http://nhd.usgs.gov/. An additional benefit of meeting the NHD specifications is the standardization of hydrography data throughout the northeast as well as nationwide.
The14-digit hydrologic unit code (HUC) watershed, for the region referred to as the Central Coastal Rivers Drainage Area, was chosen for this project. This watershed was chosen in order to give the pilot most of the anticipated issues faced by the rest of the state such as: many wetland and flat areas along with a significant coastline. Other factors influencing the selection included the availability of USGS digital orthophoto quadrangles (DOQs) and the inclusion of photo-revisions from the USGS digital raster graphics (DRGs).
Central Coastal Rivers Drainage Area - Waldoboro Vicinity
The enhancements that will be accomplished on a watershed by watershed basis includes:
The hydrography enhancements will improve the usefulness of the hydrography data for many applications, including: dam safety, water quality modeling, permit modeling and watershed analysis. These modeling and analytical abilities along with enhanced cartographic applications will make the hydrography data for the State of Maine an up-to-date and extremely valuable dataset.
For more information please visit the Websites mentioned in this article or contact David Kirouac at David.Kirouac@state.me.us or Angela Brockmann at Anji.Brockmann@state.me.us
