LAKE JESUP VEGETATION MAPPING: AN INTER-AGENCY COLLABORATION. Lakshmi Sankaran, GISP Public Works Department, Seminole County

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1 LAKE JESUP VEGETATION MAPPING: AN INTER-AGENCY COLLABORATION Lakshmi Sankaran, GISP Public Works Department, Seminole County

2 LAKE JESUP Area - 12 sq miles Shoreline - 53 miles Watershed sq miles Runoff Creeks and Canals 7 Municipalities in Seminole County

3 Lake Jesup Vegetation Survey July 16-19, 2007 Agencies: Florida Department of Environmental Protection Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission Seminole County Water Quality Seminole County Sherriff's Office St Johns River Water Management District And Seminole County Public Works GIS Seminole County Environmental Services Providing Boats GPS Units An ArcPad License Biologists GPS Operators And a whole lot of learning and fun!

4 Logistics/scheduling by our Lake Management Program Coordinator 5 Teams Agencies bring their boats, biologists County provides GPS units and Operators

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6 Survey of Shoreline Vegetation Survey of any Underwater Vegetation Survey of Floating Vegetation Questions: Which Shoreline? FEMA FIS Study 2005 shoreline How far inwards into the shoreline? Visible line from boat What species of vegetation are expected to be found? Species List provided How many Transect Sections? About 1000 ft apart

7 Procedure for Shorelines Shorelines sections assigned to a team Sections divided into sub-sections with a pre-assigned ID no. to match Field Book ID. GPS Operator navigates to start of section and calls out end of section. GPS operator records only the dominant vegetation from a domain drop down against the shoreline section ID Biologist records all other species by percentage of coverage of the shoreline section in Field Book. Polylines

8 Procedure for Floating Vegetation Empty polygon feature class Create polygon in field by running the airboat around the edge Assign ID GPS operator records only the dominant vegetation from a domain drop down against the shoreline section ID Biologist records all other species by percentage of coverage of the polygon in Field Book. Polygons

9 Procedure for Transects Boat follows transect line Biologist drops rake Drop a GPS point if underwater vegetation found If polygon is identifiable under water, drop points around perimeter Assign ID GPS operator records only the dominant vegetation from a domain drop down against the shoreline section ID Biologist records all other species in Field Book.

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11 90 species domain Had to be re-typed into a table Field Book

12 What really happened I had never used a GPS before Had no ArcPad license The PW GIS team had used data loggers of the antiquated kind No team had an experienced GPS operator either Transect boats needed waypoints to navigate transects via their Garmin I don t like the sun Solution We managed 1 ArcPad license SemCo Environmental Services provided 4 GPS units (one did not work at all) they all had Arc Pad Went through a crash course on GPS from Environmental Services GPS Settings ArcPad Projects Data Dictionary Uploads and merges

13 Then we trained the GPS Operator team Test Run on July 16 GPS files were saved by date and team

14 The Results All the field book data was entered into a table in the geodatabase

15 Lake Jesup Vegetation Survey May 3-4, 2010 Public Works Traffic Engineering has 2 GPS units Environmental Services has upgraded their GPS units We know what to expect However The shoreline no longer looks the same water is higher There has been a restoration project The Aquatic Habitat Restoration and Enhancement Sub-section (AHRES) is part of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. Mission is to manage and restore freshwater aquatic habitats to benefit fish and wildlife.

16 Lake Jesup Vegetation Survey May 3-4, 2010 Keep the same shoreline sections, transects Map additional exposed shorelines with new ID

17 Map Analysis for a biologist Native vs Non-Native Species A Native column was added to the Species list

18 Map Analysis for a biologist Restoration Area changes A happy thing!

19 Map Analysis for a biologist Submersed Vegetation changes A happy thing!

20 Map Analysis for a biologist Floating Vegetation changes FLOATING VEGETATION YEAR TOTAL NATIVE NON-NATIVE Number of Polygons surveyed

21 Map Analysis for a biologist Floating Vegetation changes

22 And in the end The 2010 Survey was actually more difficult Biologists noted species not in the GIS domain The GPS Operators did not follow protocol especially along old shoreline sections and assigned their own IDs Satellite reception was particularly spotty Boat went faster than the GPS trace There were a few re-runs An airboat was not used to run the polygons so the polygons were larger than the actual occurrence There was actually additional work and QA/QC back at the office It is difficult to record/represent via maps, ever changing nature at such a small scale Survey of the SR 46 bridge area on 9/28/2010 Try photo interpretation with ArcGIS 10 using field samples

23 Gloria Eby Senior Environmental Scientist Seminole County Water Quality Section Lake Management Program Lakshmi Sankaran Sr GIS Analyst Seminole County Public Works