Josiah Emerson, Majory Silisyene, Cynthia Ratzlaff FR 3262 Section 1

 The Lower St. Croix National Scenic Riverway is the last 52 miles of the St. Croix River.  Is jointly managed by the National Park Service (NPS) and the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) of the states of Minnesota and Wisconsin.  Much of the land on the river is under private ownership, and thus, are managed under scenic easements.

 In 1972 the Lower St. Croix River was added to the National Wild and Scenic River System (NWSRS), and in 1975, the original boundary for the river was published.  Since its inclusion in the NWSR, it has been managed as a recreational and scenic river.  The increase in diverse recreational use and population near in and around the river caused a need for a new look at management planning.

 Development pressure due to high (18%) human population growth rate in Washington County.  Experience show that people feel the need to utilize their lands more profitably; therefore, possibly not abiding to agreements made in the scenic easements.  Consequently, possible removal of vegetation, or practice farming techniques that go against easement agreements.  Evaluate the effectiveness of the Wild & Scenic Rivers Act (WSRA) of  Need to determine land cover changes that could result in a detrimental impact to the river.

1. To analyze land cover in private lands within 500meters from the St. Croix River. 2. Determine land cover changes within our study area by comparing land cover in 1984 (nine years after a management plan was set) to land cover in 2010.

 HO: Land cover in privately owned lands has not changed over the past twenty-six years of implementation of the WSRA of 1969  HA: Land cover in privately owned lands has changed over the past twenty-six years of implementation of the WSRA of 1969

 Materials and tools  1984 image (LT XXX01) and 2010 image (LT PAC01). Acquired from  Shapefiles - Minnesota County Boundaries, ownership types (as of 2008 ) and St. Croix river. Acquired from  Softwares - ArcMap 10 and ERDAS Imagine 2011  Google map

 Identifying Study Area – Using ArcMap 10 Overlaid the Minnesota county boundary shapefile with the St. Croix River shapefile and then extracted an area found near the river and within Washington County. We made a buffer of 500meters on the St. Croix River section found in the Washington County. Using the union tool, we overlaid the 500meters buffer with the land ownership shapefile We further reduced our study area by clipping areas only found in Afton Township

198 4 Clipped images before classification 2010 Methods and procedures cont’

 Image preparation – image stacking and projection  Extraction of study area - we used a shapefile of our study area to extract a portion of the image from the two images  Classification – Supervised classification of individual images - at least 7 sites were included in training sites - Identified classes - forest, agricultural land, grasses land, commercial, developed – rural, and beach area  Change detection (Thematic change) – Used a matrix union (not complete) - Summary report of matrix tool was used to obtain the amount (in acres) and percentages of land that has changed in each class.

 Observed land cover changes include; From forests to rural development From grassy areas to rural development From forest to impervious (beach area) Note: These results may be incorrect because of misinterpretation of some features due to inexperience, small study area, and poor resolution of images used.

1984 LAND COVER PERCENTAGE 2010 LAND COVER PERCENTAGE

 Some areas may be incorrectly classified due to low resolution images used  Inconclusive results on how much land cover types have changed to other land cover types

Conclusion:  There is evidence in land cover change (for example, from natural forests and grass to rural development Recommendations  Need to conduct a more rigorous study to determine how much land has changed to other uses to avoid future pollutions in the river.  Need to re-evaluate the effectiveness of the Wild & Scenic Rivers Act (WSRA) of 1969