On this page:
Results of Sub-watershed Mapping
Results of Watershed Mapping of Large Peatlands
Results of Wetlands Mapping
Results of Landowner Outreach

RESULTS

Similar to past Adirondack Park watershed projects undertaken by the APA and partners, this project resulted in the creation of two new detailed GIS data layers of sub-watersheds and wetlands for a large portion of the Park. These data will be useful for current planning decisions, and provide a major baseline data source for monitoring trends in Park resources. The landowner outreach portion of this project added a new facet to the traditional Park watershed-mapping project, the result of which was a greater awareness about the landscape on the part of some St. Regis River Basin residents. In addition, APA and ANCLT gained a greater understanding of issues of importance to large landowners in the Park.

Results of Sub-watershed Mapping
The final area calculated for the portion of the St. Regis Watershed falling within the Adirondack Park boundary was 341,981.2 acres (138,392.4 ha). A total of 266 sub-watersheds were mapped (Figure 4), and these ranged in size from 5.4 acres to 65,575.3 acres (2.2 ha - 26,536.9 ha) with a mean watershed size of 1290.4 acres (s = 5541.2 acres) (522.2 ha, s = 2242.4 ha). Internally draining sub-watersheds, those with no outlet, numbered 24 (9.0% of total). Comparatively, in the Upper Hudson watershed only 15 of the 953 sub-watersheds mapped (1.6% of total) were found to be internally draining. There were 5 SCS 11-digit watersheds (USDA/SCS 1980) contained within the St. Regis Watershed (Figure 5). Appending the 11-digit code to the sub-watershed data is useful for linking other data sets that reference SCS labels.

Figure 4. Sub-watersheds of the St. Regis river basin. Sub-watershed lines were overlaid on the shaded relief map to indicate watershed drainage direction.

Figure 5. SCS 11-digit watersheds and associated statistics.

Forty-one regional watersheds were created using the watershed regionalization AML (Appendix 9, Primack 1988), twenty-four of which were those without an outlet. The AML appended a regional attribute table to the polygon coverage that contained the field 'NSUBS,' which listed the number of sub-watersheds contained within each regional watershed. Regionalization of watersheds illustrates the combined contribution of upstream sub-watersheds to stream discharge. The two largest regional watersheds were the West Branch of the St. Regis River and the Middle and East Branches combined. Metadata for the regionalized watersheds are included with the sub-watershed metadata (Appendix 5).

Results of Watershed Mapping of Large Peatlands
Watersheds mapped for Madawaska Wetland, Waverly Bog, Osgood River Muskeg, and Spring Pond Bog are shown in Figure 6 overlaid on the map of wetlands in the St. Regis River Basin. The watersheds of the four large wetland areas all occur in undeveloped areas of the St. Regis River Basin. Spring Pond Bog and Waverly Bog occur in areas classified as Resource Management, and Madawaska and Osgood wetlands occur partially on Resource Management land and State Forest Preserve land.

The acreages of open peat mat (wetland label 'SS3') and surrounding watersheds of the four wetlands are listed in Table 3 along with the ratio of open peat mat area to watershed area.

Figure 6. Wetlands of the St. Regis River Basin overlaid with watersheds of large wetland complexes.

Results of Wetlands Mapping
Results of wetlands mapping (Figure 6) revealed that there were 52,867.5 acres (21,394.8 ha) of wetlands in the St. Regis River Basin (excluding the 4463 acres (1806 ha) not mapped on the Carry Falls Reservoir quadrangle), thus 15.4% of the watershed is occupied by wetlands. Comparatively, 15.2% of the Oswegatchie-Black (Roy et al.1996) and 7.0% of the Upper Hudson (Primack et al. 2000) watersheds were made up of wetlands.

Ten major wetland cover types were mapped in the St. Regis Watershed (Table 4) in addition to numerous open water ('OW') polygons and two small polygons of unconsolidated bottom ('UB3' - total area 1 acre (0.4 ha)) in the northwest portion of the watershed. There were a total of 233 wetland label combinations mapped (Appendices 3 and 4). The label types with the largest area in the watershed were FO4 (alone, and in combination with /SS4), palustrine OW, SS1 in combination with /EM1, SS3 in combination with /EM1, and SS4 in combination with /SS3 (Table 5). In general, these wetland types also occurred most frequently in the landscape (highest number of polygons), however there was also a high number of FO1 polygons even though this type was not abundant in terms of area (Table 6). The label types FO4, FO4/SS4, SS1/EM1, SS3/EM1, and SS4/SS3 accounted for 50.7% of the total wetlands area (Table 5) and 41.6% of the number of wetland polygons (Table 6). Comparatively, in the Upper Hudson, the label types with the largest areas were SS1/EM1, FO4/SS1, and FO4, respectively accounting for 54% of the total wetland area (Primack et al. 2000). In the Oswegatchie-Black watershed, wetland types SS1/EM1, FO4/SS4, and FO4 accounted for 55% of the total wetland area (Roy et al. 1996). Table 7 shows the distribution of cover types among the Class1/Class2 labeling scheme.

Beaver activity was noted in 17.1% of wetlands, including palustrine ponds and lakes ('POW') by area, and 28.8% of wetlands and POW by number of polygons (Table 8). In the Upper Hudson watershed, beaver activity was noted in 13.9% of wetlands by area, and 16.6% of wetlands by number of polygons. While the percent of total wetland area affected by beaver activity is similar between the two watersheds, there is a greater percentage in the number of wetlands in the St. Regis River Basin that are modified by beavers.

Wetlands with a saturated water regime (water regime modifiers B and E) comprised 72.4% of the total wetland area (Table 9). Upper Hudson wetlands with a saturated water regime comprised 85% of the total wetland area (Primack et al. 2000) and 74% of total wetland area in the Oswegatchie-Black (Roy et al. 1996). Landscape wetness characteristics begin to emerge when the data from the three major watersheds is compared. While there is less area in the Upper Hudson watershed covered by wetlands compared to the other two major watersheds, >10% more wetland area is classified as having a saturated water regime in the Upper Hudson.

One reason for possible differences in labeling between the St. Regis project and the Oswegatchie-Black and Upper Hudson projects is that a new labeling protocol was used in the St. Regis to address the high level of beaver activity and subsequent complexity of wetlands. The water regime modifier 'H', denoting a permanently flooded wetland, was used only with the open water class 'OW' in previous projects. However, in the St. Regis project, 'H' was used with vegetated categories to denote wetland complexes that also contain significant ponded water areas that were too small to delineate separately. There may be minor differences in wetland water regime modifiers, in general, between the St. Regis wetlands maps and those of the Oswegatchie-Black and Upper Hudson because the St. Regis was mapped by a different person. Differences in aerial photo interpretation from person to person are normal and to be expected. QA/QC strives to limit the differences.

Table 5. Area of Class1 and Class2 wetland labels on wetlands maps of the St. Regis Watershed.
Area in acres

Table 6. Number of polygons for Class1 and Class2 wetland labels on wetlands maps in the St. Regis Watershed.

Results of Landowner Outreach

Figure 7. Land classification in the St. Regis watershed (APA 2000).

The thematic maps created for three different privately owned parcels within the St. Regis Watershed covered over 24,000 acres (10,000 ha). On some maps, such as the watershed-wide Adirondack Park land classification map, acreage and percentage values were given for different items in the legend (Figure 7). On other maps, interpretations in the map text describe data sources and how the data can be used. For instance, on the property elevation map (Figure 8), the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC) stream classifications (NYSDEC 1986) and unique Pond ID codes are explained [note: the figure has been modified for Web display and the stream classificaiton and PondID information have been removed]. On the orthoimage map (Figure 9), color infrared digital orthophotography is explained along with the definition of an orthophoto (NYS GIS Clearinghouse 2000b)[note: the figure has been modified for Web display and DOQQ defination has been removed]. A table of slope ratings (Table 10) was provided along with the map of percent slope of the property (Figure 10). Examples of other maps in the map packet were Soil Erodibility (Figure 11) and Predicted Nitrogen Deposition in Adirondack Park (Figure 12).

In the landowner meetings, landowners were provided with map packets containing watershed-wide and property-specific thematic maps. Watershed-wide maps gave context to the large-scale property maps. Large-scale thematic property maps provided a framework for discussing specific resource management issues with the landowners. GIS databases and different types of GIS data such as digital elevation models (DEM) and digital orthophotos were explained to the landowners. Discussing the soils map led to an explanation of soil catenas, and differences between the detailed wetlands map and NYS GAP Analysis land cover map led to a discussion of map accuracy, scale and field verification. Sharing of information came not only from APA and ANCLT participants but the landowners as well who could connect their observations on the ground to what was shown on the maps.

Figure 8. Elevation on the property.

Figure 9. Digital orthophotos of the property. The landowner found these very useful because of the high level of detail.

Table 10. Slope potentials and limitations table (Source: USDA-NRCS, 1999), and map of % slope on the property.

Figure 10. Slope map shown together with NRCS slope rating interpretations (Table 10.)

Figure 11. Soil erosion potential on the property.

The first meeting took place in August 2000 with a landowner that could provide valuable feedback on the maps created for his property because he used GIS himself. He suggested ways in which the maps could be improved, noting such things as a mislabeled river and ways in which the visuals could be refined for greater clarity. One issue that arose in the discussion of the maps for this property was resolution. Some of the maps, such as the soils map whose original scale was 1:62,500, were taken from a Park-wide or even State-wide data set, which, when applied to this property and the two smaller properties used for this project, seemed very coarse. The maps that had a more appropriate level of detail for the properties were the sub-watershed, wetland, 10m DEM/slope, and orthoimage maps.

Figure 12. Predicted nitrogen deposition in the Park (Ollinger et al. 1993).

Figure 13. Sub-watershed map showing the property at the headwaters of the St. Regis watershed.

The second meeting took place in October 2000 with landowner Paul Dooling. Like the first landowner, Mr. Dooling was very involved with the management of his property and had commissioned water quality studies and other surveys. Mr. Dooling found the orthoimage map (Figure 9) and sub-watershed map (Figure 13) to be the most useful maps in the packet because of the great amount of detail shown in the former and the realization from viewing the latter that his pond formed the headwaters for the St. Regis River watershed. This explained how a heritage strain of brook trout had evolved in isolation in the pond. In this meeting, like the first, coarseness of data was discussed, especially in terms of the NYS GAP Analysis map, which Mr. Dooling felt was useful at the scale of the State or Park, but not his property.

Mr. Dooling was pleased with the map packet because it was tangible, especially in comparison to the real property maps and forest stand tables he was shown when buying the land. He recommended to ANCLT that such map packets be used as "scientific, management, and public relations tools" created for potential conservation easement candidates to get them to think more about the intrinsic characteristics of their properties. Having the map packet gave him incentive to do more data collection on his property, and he said that he gained appreciation for the government agency (APA) that produced the maps and the private agency (ANCLT) to which he is connected by easement.

Another meeting with Mr. Dooling took place in November 2000. APA staff made an on-site visit to Mr. Dooling's property and hiked through the landscape they had mapped. This offered an opportunity to discuss the property in more detail. The history of the forest and the future of the stand were discussed, as well as the ecology of standing and fallen dead wood.

An important outcome of the outreach portion of the project was the relationship forged between the landowners and the APA and ANCLT. In addition to a greater understanding of the property and the use of GIS as a land management tool, the landowners became familiar with the services the APA and ANCLT can provide. The APA and ANCLT gained potential partners for Park resource studies, especially those pertaining to wetlands discussed in the literature survey.

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References Cited