Watershed Mapping – It’s a lot easier than it used to be
By D. Baccante
Charlie Lake Conservation Society
Historically, detailed mapping of a watershed, or any other geographic feature, could only be done by government or commercial agencies who had the budgets to purchase the required software and databases. Open source software and wide availability of online data has changed this drastically.
It has opened up tremendous opportunities for anyone to download data right onto their desktop computer and use free mapping software such as QGIS, to analyze and summarize information for their own particular area of interest. Non-profit organizations have now access to tools and data that they did not have before.
To show an example of this approach, the report: “Watershed Mapping – Using Stoddard Creek Watershed as an Example” was written to show the variety of data that can be easily downloaded and used in QGIS to generate descriptive maps for a watershed, or any other distinct geographical boundary. This report shows the types of summaries that can be generated using data available from websites and mapping software, such as QGIS. There’s a requirement for a certain level of technical expertise to use these tools, but the good news is that there are plenty of available online resources to learn them.
It is also important to note that, the proliferation of apps available on mobile phones, provide easy access to similar tools. This has created a huge global community of users who contribute to ecological databases, which helps scientists to study an endless variety of ecosystem components. The term “Citizen Science” has been adopted to describe this phenomenon, and it’s a theme that the Charlie Lake Conservation Society is planning to feature in its future activities.
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