Russian River Watershed Atlas helps track and coordinate post-fire activities
Fire recovery in the Russian River Watershed will benefit from a common online platform for compiling, visualizing, and interpreting many kinds of environmental data available from diverse federal, state, regional, and local sources. Providing such a platform is one objective of the Russian River Regional Monitoring Program (R3MP). To meet this objective in the most immediately helpful way possible, the North Coast Regional Water Board is supporting the beta development of a R3MP web tool (r3mp.ecoatlas.org) designed specifically to help the Russian River community of environmental agencies and NGOs target, coordinate, track, and evaluate post-fire response and recovery efforts, especially with respect to monitoring stormwater BMPs and protective measures for drinking water intake facilities.
The R3MP web tool will add value to existing federal, state, regional, and local datasets, without replacing or duplicating any existing efforts to develop or compile data. To help assure its maximum value, the web tool will be developed with advice and review from a local work group of the R3MP. This initial effort will quickly create new capacity to plan, track, and summarize post-fire recovery efforts across public programs at all levels of government for any user-defined area within the Russian River watershed. The web tool can be later adapted to serve individual environmental regulatory and management programs.
To develop a functional R3MP web tool as quickly as possible, the existing California EcoAtlas toolset will be adapted to the Russian River Watershed. EcoAtlas (ecoatlas.org) is a public, science-based, online mapping and data management system developed through the California Water Quality Monitoring Council to implement its Wetland and Riparian Area Monitoring Plan (WRAMP). Environmental agencies and NGOs in many regions of the state are using EcoAtlas to advance their programs. EcoAtlas includes a variety of tools for generating new environmental information at any user-defined scale. For its initial application in the Russian River Watershed, EcoAtlas will feature three tools:
- California Aquatic Resources Inventory (CARI)
- Project Tracker
- CD3
Custom applications will reflect local and regional information needs.
Related Projects, News, and Events:
EcoAtlas (Project)
California's EcoAtlas provides access to information for effective wetland management. EcoAtlas is a set of tools for generating, assembling, storing, visualizing, sharing, and reporting environmental data and information. The tools can be used individually or together, and they can be adjusted or tuned to meet the specific needs of environmental planners, regulators, managers, scientists, and educators. The maps and tools can be used to create a complete picture of aquatic resources in the landscape by integrating stream and wetland maps, restoration information, and monitoring results with land use, transportation, and other information important to the state’s wetlands.
Contaminant Data Download and Display (CD3) (Project)
Contaminant Data Display and Download Tool or CD3 is an innovative visualization tool for accessing water quality data for the San Francisco Bay-Delta and northern montane regions. It is the primary tool for accessing and downloading the San Francisco Bay Regional Monitoring Program’s (RMP) long-term dataset and other project data stored in SFEI's Regional Data Center (RDC).
New Project Tracker online forms (News)
New Project Tracker online forms enhance EcoAtlas' regional capacity for habitat restoration project tracking, assessment and reporting. Partners can now upload and edit project information and approve projects for display on EcoAtlas. Project Tracker meets the important need of providing tools for partners to manage their projects and display information on EcoAtlas, a tool for visualizing the condition and extent of California's aquatic resources.
The key benefits of Project Tracker include:
EcoAtlas’ Landscape Profile Tool v2.0 (News)
The recent EcoAtlas release delivers new functionality and enhancements to the Landscape Profiler, a tool that summarizes ecological information at various spatial scales for assessment, planning, and reporting. Users can upload a KML file, edit the boundary, and save a polygon for their area of interest. Additional datasets are summarized in the Landscape Profile Report, including the revised 2011 National Land Cover Dataset, eelgrass survey data along the coast from Humboldt Bay to San Diego Bay, and percentages of languages spoken from the US Census data.
California Aquatic Resource Inventory (CARI) (Project)
The California Aquatic Resources Inventory (CARI) is a Geographic Information System (GIS) based map of wetlands, streams, and riparian areas within California that is hosted online through EcoAtlas.
EcoAtlas: New CARI Editor and Modern Delta Habitat Types (News)
An accurate basemap is fundamental to watershed planning and assessments. The California Aquatic Resources Inventory, or CARI, offers such a basemap for aquatic resource identification and classification. But to keep it current and enhance its details, SFEI-ASC must leverage local knowledge. The new CARI Editor promotes regional stewardship and allows users to submit updates, deletions or new features for streams and wetlands.
BAARI v2.0 is now available! (News)
Version 2 of the BAARI (Bay Area Aquatic Resource Inventory) GIS dataset has been released. Local experts provided advice on and reviewed BAARI’s baylands, stream and wetland data layers to increase its accuracy and detail.
Russian River Watershed Projects at the San Francisco Estuary Institute (Project)
Our projects in the Russian River Watershed help us to understand our past, understand our present, and envision our future. Learn more about what SFEI is doing in partnership with others to advance our scientific understanding of this valuable landscape.