Work Plan - Watershed Master Plan

Local and Regional Geographic Information System (GIS) Implementation

Stage:

Total Project Cost:

$8,000,000 - $12,000,000

Funding Secured:

$940,000 from US Army Corps of Engineers and Government Information Technology Fund

Location:

Upper Susquehanna-Lackawanna River Watershed and nearby communities

Project Background:

The Pennsylvania Geographic Information System Consortium (Consortium), which is a 501(c)(3) organization jointly administered by King's College and Wilkes University, is dedicated to implementing locally independent, regionally coordinated multiple-purpose geographic information system (GIS) program in Central and Northeastern Pennsylvania to achieve a wide variety of well-coordinated GIS projects. These GIS projects will accomplish environmental restoration, economic development, "smart growth" land-use planning, infrastructure development, and training to use GIS for decision support. One of the Consortium's first projects will be to design and implement a GIS-based environmental master plan in the watershed to support the AHR effort. A two-year comprehensive study of the entire Upper Susquehanna-Lackawanna River Watershed Ecosystem needs to be undertaken. Several phases are proposed.

First, a team of river and landscape ecologists, along with other environmental scientists, should integrate all existing terrestrial and aquatic environmental data, on a GIS within an ecological watershed framework. After such data are compiled, GIS analyses should then be used to identify regions and portions of the river system that have limited environmental data, where environmental impacts are severe and complex, where high human populations are situated nearby, and where local, state, federal, and private resources for pollution control, environmental cleanup, and ecological restoration and conservation have been under-funded or considerably low.

The second phase would be to implement in-field monitoring across the river-watershed-continuum for both terrestrial and aquatic communities on defined endpoints. These data would likewise be incorporated into the GIS model developed in phase one to complete the overall watershed assessment. Resulting data and analyses would be used in the engineering design of cleanup efforts, ecological restoration activities, and design implementation of a watershed flood control effort.

Phase three would constitute the environmental monitoring program where a subset of the variables and sites would be maintained for ongoing environmental monitoring of the river ecosystem to determine degree of improvement and cost-effectiveness of the remediation efforts.

Potential Funding Sources:

(1) U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Section 206 of the Water Resources Development Act), (2) U.S. Geological Surveys’ Federal Geographic Data Committee’s National Spatial Data Infrastructure Competitive Cooperation Agreements Program, (3) a demonstration GIS project addressing significant acid mine drainage within EPA’s watershed programs, (4) the Department of Commerce’s Telecommunications and Information Infrastructure Assistance Program (TIIAP) program could be instructed to award a GIS program, or (5) Community/Federal Information Technology program.

Contact Agency / Person:

Dale Bruns, Ph.D., PA GIS Consortium, Wilkes University, Wilkes-Barre; Telephone (570) 408-4610

Enhanced Montour County GIS: Stage:
1; Total Project Cost:
$350,000; Funding Secured:; Location:
Montour County; Project Background:
GIS mapping of Montour County is currently underway. This project would enhance the GIS effort by including countywide digitizing of properties, roads, streets, etc. for emergency management services and assessment purposes.; Potential Funding Sources:
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development; Contact Agency / Person:
Thomas E. Herman, Chairman, Montour County Board of Commissioners; Telephone (570) 271-3000