February 13, 2008, 8:00am - 3:00pm

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Northeast Regional Office
300 Westgate Center Drive map it!
Hadley, MA 01035-9589

Download the brochure and registration form.

There has been a lot of interest in recent years on the use of geographic information systems (GIS) for watershed planning. This meeting will showcase the Rapid Watershed Assessment (RWA) initiative, a Natural Resources Conservation Service program that strives to make watershed-based information quickly available to decisionmakers (especially NRCS staff) to support their programming.

The Southern New England Chapter of the Soil and Water Conservation Society had partnered with the Rhode Island Office of the NRCS to develop a special one-day workshop that introduces the Rapid Watershed Assessment (RWA) concept. This workshop will feature two sessions. The first will focus on new or emerging GIS systems that pump out information from large datasets and the second will focus on feedback from data consumers. The goal of the workshop is to begin to explore the gaps in mission critical information between information producers and consumers.

Presentations (all titles link to its respective pdf files)

Welcome, Overview, Purpose, and Introductions of Panel – Peter August, University of Rhode Island

Information to Support NRCS Programs – Jan Surface, National Watershed Planner, NRCS

Some Landscape and Spatial Analysis Tools and Datasets for Rapid Watershed Assessment – Short Version – Greg Hellyer, Ecological Monitoring Team (ECA), USEPA Region 1
-----addendum: Watershed Assessment, Tracking & Environmental ResultS (WATERS)

US Forest Service – Spatial Analysis Project – Karl R. Dalla Rosa, Forest Stewardship Program Manager

USGS, The National Map, and the National Hydrologic Dataset (NHD) Data Portals – Peter Steeves, USGS WRD Boston

Kicking the Tires: A Prototype for the Rhode Island RWA – Greg Bonynge, University of Rhode Island

Information Needs for Ecosystem Status & Trends – Richard Ribb, The Narragansett Bay Estuary Program

Status and Trends for Rhode Island Freshwaters: Making sure we have the basics – Meg Kerr, The Narragansett Bay Estuary Program

Nonpoint Education for Municipal Officials (NEMO) and the Community Resource Inventory: A Municipal Planning Perspective – David Dickson, Coordinator National NEMO Network, University of Connecticut

Rapid Assessment of Stream Condition – Mickey Marcus, New England Environmental Inc.

USDA NRCS Rapid Watershed Assessments – Timothy Sweeney, NWMC, USDA