Water Crossings (FP)

The Water Crossing (WC) layer contains over 30,000 points which evolved from combining points that were in the RMAP GIS layer and the FPHP GIS layer. From the RMAP GIS layer, only points coded as Fish Passable (FP), Fish Barrier (FB) and Non-Fish (NF) were brought over into the new WC layer. The final full RMAP GIS layer, including all points, is being retained by the Forest Practices Information Technology (FPIT) team. The final updates to this layer occurred on or before 11/15/2024. No further updates are being made to the RMAP GIS layer. All future updates will occur in the new Water Crossing layer. For the FPHP GIS layer, all points as of 12/31/2024 were initially brought over into the new WC layer. Some FPHP points were deleted from the new Water Crossing layer if there was a duplicate RMAP point in the same location. This was done using GIS and involved applying a 50 foot buffer around points to detect likely duplicates. This was done to clean up the layer and reduce the number of duplicate points between the RMAP and FPHP layers. There is the possibility that data could have been deleted that did not represent a duplicate point. If mistakes are found field staff will have the ability to add these points back into the Water Crossing data. As landowners continue to propose new FPHP projects in FPAs, all of these points will continue to be added to the FPHP GIS layer. These new FPHP points will be added to the Water Crossing layer as field staff conduct inspections on these locations. Field staff will be able to click on a new FPHP point and add it to the Water Crossing layer when they are out in the field conducting an inspection. When an inspection occurs, the data fields in the FPHP dataset will automatically be transferred over to the Water Crossing database. Any inspection information will also be added to the point in the Water Crossing layer. As part of the development of the WC layer, the Road Specialists identified fields currently in the RMAP dataset that should be included in the new WC layer. All of the fields currently in the FPHP layer were included in the WC layer. There are a couple of fields in the WC layer that were derived from other fields. This is being mentioned due to the possibility of incorrect information in these derived fields and so that we have a record of how the layer was developed. As the layer is used over time by field staff any incorrect information can be corrected based on actual field observations. The “Structure” field is one of the fields that contains some derived data. The original RMAP dataset, surprisingly, did not have a structure field but in some cases the “Comment” field was used to record the type of structure. FPIT was able to globally extract some structure data from the text in the “Comment” field and then update the “Structure” field with this data. Keywords such as “bridge”, “removal”, and “culvert” were used to populate the “Structure” field for some RMAP points that had these words in the “Comment” field. Some QA/QC was performed on the data to improve the accuracy but there is the potential that incorrect information could have been added. For the symbology used in the Water Crossing layer an ”Approximate Age” field is used. This field contains derived data also. For the RMAP points the “Fix Date” field was used as a proxy for structure age. For many RMAP points where work was completed in 2010 or later this will be relatively accurate. There were a few conventions used in the RMAP GIS layer related to Fix Dates that are worth reviewing: 1999 dates: When the RMAP data was moved from paper and spreadsheets to its current GIS format, a date with the year 1999 was used for points/crossings that were fixed prior to the adoption of the RMAP rules. 2001 dates: A date with the year 2001 was used for points that were fixed during the RMAP period from 2001 to approximately 2010. 2010 and later: After around 2010 the RMAP Coordinators updated the Fix Date field with dates provided by landowners. For FPHP points the Expiration Date of the FPA associated with the point was used as a proxy for “Approximate Age”. This should be within 3 years of the actual date that work was completed on the project, since that is the typical timeframe of an FPA. The “Approximate Age” field is used to develop symbology so that it is easier to identify older culverts that may have a higher potential for resource damage. Thus, knowing the approximate age should be sufficient even though it may not be 100% accurate.