BUILDING CAPACITY TO PROTECT DRINKING WATER (2017-2021)
Rosemeyer, P. (2017, October). Cool morning, warm water[Photograph]. Flickr.
Access to safe water is essential for promoting health, recreation, and economic development. However, we systematically undervalue our water resources, leading to the overuse of water or degradation of water quality. Funded by the Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund (ENRTF) in partnership with the Minnesota Department of Health, Institute on the Environment, and Department of Forest Resources, this project aims to highlight potential risks and opportunities to protect water quality and provide public benefits. Using surveys, focus groups, environmental modeling, and economic assessments, we will identify financial practices or incentive programs that protect the value of clean water, and build capacity among citizens and decision-makers to take action in sourcewater protection areas to improve water quality.
For more on the value of clean water, view a Story Map created by Orli Handmaker on the value of drinking water protection in Minnesota.
Lead Investigator: Bonnie Keeler
Co-Investigators: Mae Davenport (CCL), Tannie Eshenaur (MDH)
Project Manager: Ryan Noe
Synthesis Report: detailed description of motivation, methods, results and discussion. Includes figures summarizing our analysis statewide.
https://hdl.handle.net/11299/227195
Data appendices: datasets created in our research targeted towards conservation managers and source water protection planners. All appendices are distributed as a single .zip file at the above URL. Descriptions of individual files are below.
Appendix A: PWS land use and demographics
This .csv file contains data that can be analyzed independently or joined to a DWSMA shapefile (typically the user will want to dissolve the DWSMA shapefile on the ‘pwsId’ field prior to joining). This file contains attributes on the demographics of populations served by PWS, nitrate concentrations, estimated treatment costs of reverse osmosis, and aggregated geologic vulnerability, land value, land cover, and protected area of the DWSMAs that serve a PWS. See Table 7 of synthesis report for descriptions of all attributes.
Appendix B: DWSMA land use trends
This .xlsx spreadsheet file contains data on land cover for every DWSMA dis-aggregated by vulnerability class for 2001 to 2019. The data are stored in a pivot table, so the user can select subsets of DWSMAs and automatically create a visualization and summary statistics of land use trends.
Appendix C: Parcel environmental benefits and land use table
This .csv file contains data that can be analyzed independently or joined to Appendix D. This file contains attributes on the environmental benefits, geologic vulnerability, land value, land cover, and protected area of the parcels within DWSMAs. See Table 5 of the synthesis report for descriptions of all attributes.
Appendix D: Parcel environmental benefits and land use shapefile
This .shp shapefile contains a subset of Public Land Survey quarter-quarter section parcels (commonly referred to as forties because they are approximately 40 acres each) that intersect with DWSMAs. Users that want to map the data found in Appendix C should join it to this file on ‘forty_id’.