NWCC Spatial Services-Enhancing Watershed Characterization Reporting System.
Project ID: NR253A750023C024
Federal Agency: Natural Resources Conservation Service Partner Institution: Portland State University Fiscal Year: 2025
Initial Funding: $70,000
Total Funding: $70,000
Principal Investigator: Duh, Juinn-Der Geoffrey Agreement Technical Representative: Garcia, Contessa Agreement Technical Representative: Landers, Lexi
Abstract:
The purposes of this agreement, between the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) and Portland State University (Recipient), are to 1) include additional geospatial data, such as fire disturbance, irrigation condition, soil hydrological characteristics, and land cover (e.g., vegetation) change, in watershed analysis and characterization reports, 2) enhance the watershed-based online Snow and Water Geospatial Data portal so that it can ingest additional geospatial data, such as soil moisture and groundwater data, and 3) enhance the basin analysis tools for increasing the accessibility and portability of basin analysis model’s output. The services and results will provide and maintain enhanced GIS tools and data portal for NRCS’ hydrologic and conservation planning use and for the public to access watershed-based geospatial data over the internet.
Objectives
The following six objectives will be accomplished during the project period from October 1, 2025, to September 30, 2026.
- Enhancement and publication of watershed analysis reports – Design and develop tools to summarize statistics of fire disturbance, irrigation condition, soil hydrological characteristics, and land cover (e.g., vegetation) change and include these statistics and maps in the watershed reports that are distributed on NRCS data server over the internet.
- Enhancement of Snow and Water Geospatial Data portal – Develop additional tools to characterize additional geographic attributes, including vegetation cover and other land cover types so that statistics can be categorized by different geographic attributes.
- Geospatial data databasing and data Serving – Based on the Snow and Water Geospatial Data portal system architecture to design and develop additional functions and databases for integrating spatial soil moisture and groundwater datasets for NWCC active forecast stations or other user-specified watersheds.
- Providing routine updates and servicing of Basin Analysis GIS datasets used for conservation planning – The task involved the routine maintenance of GIS data and webservices, such as, PRISM precipitation, fire burn severity data, and snowpack monitoring station data, etc. The data are currently distributed as web services on PSU and NRCS ArcGIS Online systems.
- Providing general GIS tools update and maintenance for basin analysis – The goals are to allow the continuing use of desktop basin analysis tools developed in the previous projects and enable them to interface with newly available online GIS resources and ESRI ArGIS Pro desktop GIS.
- Providing general GIS service support – The goal is to expedite the effective adoption of new GIS technologies into NWCC’s water supply forecast workflow and the coordination of state-level forecast station database management.