Maumee Watershed Geographic Information System (GIS) and Remote Sensing Project

Brief Introduction

As of October 2005, the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) has entered into a five year Memorandum of Understanding with the Geographic Information Science & Applied Geography (GISAG) Research Center of the Department of Geography and Planning at the University of Toledo, Ohio.

Site Directory

People

Project Outline

Scope of Work

Crop Type Identification by Use of Remote Sensing

Sources

People Involved in the Project

Dr. Kevin Czajkowski, Dr. Patrick Lawrence, Jim Coss, Phil Haney, Katie Swartz, and Rumiko Hayase

Project Outline

Work performed will assist NRCS in implementing the Maumee Watershed project, including sub watershed rapid resource assessments, watershed and area planning, on farm conservation planning and delivery of conservation technical assistance and conservation cost-share programs authorized by the 2002 Farm Bill that are of mutual interest to University of Toledo and NRCS.

Scope of Work

The tasks will generally consist of:

1) Annually determining land cover and crop rotations via remote sensing techniques.

2) Combining Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan data layers to establish Maumee Watershed Project Area GIS data layers for the project.

3) Establish and maintain a Maumee Watershed Project GIS Website to provide educational and informational outreach to share the data and information with other project partners, resource managers, and the general public.

GIS Data layers to include (but not limited to):

DEM (Digital Elevation Model)

SSURGO Soils

Stream Network

Land Use Cover

Watersheds

Quaternary and Bedrock Geology

Wetlands

Source Water Protection Areas

Groundwater data

FEMA Floodzone data and 100 Year floodplains

Climate zones

Soil drainage

Roads and Transportation

Pipelines and Transmission Lines

Recreational Areas and Parks

Landfill and Dumps

Various boundaries (e.g. states, cities and counties)

Weather and Climate Stations

Stream Hydrologic Stations

Census Information

Historical Sites and Cultural Resources

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Crop Type Identification by Use of Remote Sensing

Crop type classification for the Maumee River project is being carried out using multitemporal Landsat 5 satellite imagery. Images from several times during the growing season will allow us to differentiate between the different crop types, in particular corn, soybeans, wheat and pasture.

Once collected, the images undergo cloud screening and then are stacked in Erdas IMAGINE remote sensing software package. Training sets of crop type have been collected using a driving survey of the watershed and located with Global Positioning System (GPS) readings. These training sets are used to create spectral signatures in Erdas and then a supervised classification is performed using the Maximum Likelihood classifier.