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Research in Whitewater River valley and BWSR's water-storage tool presented to LCCMR
Summary
The commission heard two completed ENRTF-funded projects: University of Minnesota research documenting large historic sedimentation in the Whitewater River valley, and a Board of Water and Soil Resources (BWSR) project that used LIDAR and PTMApp to locate and prioritize landscape water-storage sites.
The commission received two final reports and presentations from projects funded through the Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund.
University of Minnesota: Andrew Wickert, professor at St. Anthony Falls Laboratory, summarized a multi-year effort to digitize and analyze a long-term archive of river cross-section surveys and soil borings in the Whitewater River valley of southeast Minnesota. Using transects recorded between 1939 and 1994 and soil borings reaching pre-Euro-American surface levels (circa 1855), researchers reconstructed long-term sedimentation patterns and channel migration. Wickert summarized results showing mean elevation changes of roughly 2—2.5 centimeters per year in the 1855—1939 interval (equivalent in places to several feet of sediment accumulation) and emphasized that upland conservation practices since the mid-20th century have reduced new agricultural erosion while legacy deposition remains significant downstream. He said the project budget was $199,000 and that datasets and model papers will be shared with parks and researchers.
BWSR: Henry Van Oflen of the Board of Water and Soil Resources described a strategic framework and software tools that use LIDAR, hydro-conditioned DEMs and PTMApp to identify drained basins, restoreable wetlands and candidate water-storage sites. The project produced GIS tools (an ArcGIS plugin) and a planning-level hydrologic evaluation workflow that can produce hydrographs for candidate sites during stakeholder meetings. Pilot work in multiple watersheds (Yellow Medicine, Buffalo Red) yielded thousands of mapped depressions, tens of thousands of restorable wetlands and thousands of road-storage sites; the team moved several strategies from the commission's emerging-issues strategic plan into the main RFP priorities to reflect this work.
Both presenters fielded member questions about methods, local applicability and next steps. Wickert noted publication and dataset releases are imminent; Van Oflen said BWSR plans additional testing, training and public availability of tools.
