Minnesota Water Resources Conference - Water Resources Center ...

Poster Session 4:45–5:45
BOOK OF ABSTRACTS
Tuesday, Monday, October 27 23
Blue Thumb—Planting for Clean Water
Dawn Pape, Rice Creek Watershed District, dpape@ricecreek.org; Angie Hong, Washington Conservation District; Elizabeth
Storey, Capitol Region Watershed District
This talk is geared for: MS4s and Cities working to achieve (or exceed!) their SWPPP requirements in Education
and Outreach and Public Participation. and water resource educators looking to work with a team of 37
partners to achieve change across the state.
The Blue Thumb—Planting for Clean Water program makes it easy for residents interested in doing their part to
protect water quality to plan, purchase and plant native gardens, raingardens and shorelines with native plants.
The Blue Thumb program was started by the Rice Creek Watershed District as an outreach program to meet
water quality goals identified in their strategic plan and to help their cities meet their federal Clean Water Act
mandates. Now Blue Thumb reaches beyond the Rice Creek Watershed District boundaries into the Twin Cities
metro area and greater Minnesota. There are currently 37 Blue Thumb partners.
Get involved with this award winning partnership has launched an extensive media campaign, held scores
of workshops for residents, trained professional landscapers on lake shore restoration and raingardens,
had representation at hundreds of fairs and events, created an incredible raingarden guide and have built a
partnership of 36 member organizations.
Creating a Database of Empirical Watershed Characteristics for Atlases of Minnesota’s Water Resources
Sustainability
Heidi Peterson, University of Minnesota, pete6495@umn.edu; John Nieber, University of Minnesota; Roman Kanivetsky,
University of Minnesota; David Mulla, University of Minnesota; Francisco Lahoud, University of Minnesota; Boris Shmagin,
South Dakota State University
Creating a watershed characteristic database is the first and most significant step in the analysis of spatiotemporal
distributions of Minnesota’s water balance components. The database spatially associates hydrologic
data (annual discharge, monthly proportion, and yield) with topographical, soil and vadose zone, ecological
and hydrogeological conditions and properties. USGS stream flow data for 129 gauging stations located within
Minnesota was manipulated to display within ArcGIS. The boundaries for the corresponding drainage areas
(watersheds) were delineated using ArcHydro. Characteristics of the 129 watersheds (drainage areas 100-10,000
square miles) were summarized to create a matrix database (1947-1971 (79 watersheds), 1955-1979 (93), and
1976-2006 (74)). Statistical exploratory techniques can be used with this database to transform initial matrices
of watershed characteristics into linear components and residual matrices, thereby establishing watershed
interconnections. To account for Minnesota’s future developments in water sustainability, the watershed
characteristics database can be upgraded to include monitoring the surface and ground water regimes.
Minnesota Water Resources Conference, October 27–28, 20078 48