Hudson Highlands GIS Users Group

Meeting Minutes

November 11, 1999 at Black Rock Forest Education Center

Attendees: Nancy Vlahos, Maria Dubois, Bill Schuster, Franci Schuster, Rob Sparks, John Gebhards, and Walt Daniels.

Water Quality Data

The question of how we use a water quality data base to quantify water on a GIS map still is unresolved. NJ and NY both classify streams based on trout production or trout maintenance, but that doesn't give information on the chemical composition of the water. NY State’s rating of AA, A, B, C, D. only describes the maximum level of pollution allowed in a stream, not its actual condition and does not necessarily reflect actual water quality data.

The goal is to have a water quality descriptive system such that we can uniformly quantify, or rank, the water quality for streams in the Highlands on our GIS maps. The first step is to determine what data is required. How much information do we need and how accurate? Bill Schuster thought that he might develop a student project to work on this. Once we have the data and a system to rank the streams it is easily imported into GIS.

GPS

A general discussion of GPS systems and problems.

Bill has had trouble with processing data with Magellan GPS unit due to software incompatibility. Walt mentioned that NY/NJ Trail Conference will be GPS-ing trails as soon as they get their CMT unit which cost approximately $4,000.00. Rob said he felt the Trimble Geo Explorer was easier to use than the CMT unit.

Some found CMT easier to use in the field, but its reliability depends on the use of a base station for a correction factor. One may need your own base station to get good accuracy in an area like Black Rock Forest.

Serving GIS data over the Web

Bill is wondering how to handle putting GIS data on Black Rock Forest’s website. He eventually wants to have easily accessible data for public use. Nancy suggested trying looking at UConn's MAGIC website to see how they do it. Magic stands for Map and Geographic Information Center at UConn.

Organizations

Sierra Club has a grant to do a recreation promotional map for the Highlands and plan to use digitized information with GIS. NY-NJ Trail Conference is doing trail maps and AMC plans to plot all recreational opportunities in the Highlands. RPA/Highlands Coalition are doing an H2O (Highlands to Oceans) that will be used to promote the Highlands from Pennsylvania to Connecticut with a map using GIS. All of these groups are working together to maximize use of databases and GIS.

Presentation on GIS mapping in West Milford, NJ - Rob Sparks

Our main speaker was Rob Sparks, GIS specialist from the township of West Milford, New Jersey, just south of the New York border. Being 80 square miles, West Milford recognized the importance of a local GIS and has been using one in its Planning Department since 1995. Having collected data from a myriad of sources, they have also created many layers of data themselves. All the roads were driven while collecting GPS data, creating a base map with 2-5 meter accuracy. The lot lines of eighty percent of the town's 180 tax maps have been digitized and oriented to the roads layer.

West Milford has also contracted for planimetric data for several sections of the town at 1:1200 scale, which can be overlaid onto color-infrared digital orthophotos provided by the state of New Jersey at 1:12000 scale. Using this information, Rob demonstrated the development of zoning and ownership mapping, as well as the planning of future greenways which would define growth, connect larger open space tracts, and preserve the town's semi-rural character.

The future of GIS in West Milford appears promising with the development of digital orthophotos and the resulting planimetric and topographic data by the county of Passaic Health Department, and the contracting for a parcel layer by the Township itself.

Next meeting to be scheduled, 2000

Note; We discussed that the next meeting could be Jan 18 or 19, but at this time it has been postponed until we can get a better since of when people are available and what topics they want to discuss.

The proposed agenda may include a discussion of Orange County’s GIS information by Daniel Munoz of the Orange County Water Authority.

Selection of Chair and Secretary

Please call 294-3098, John Gebhards, if you have other agenda items.

Minutes by Nancy Vlahos,

Comments by Bill Schuster and John Gebhards