Abstract

Updating Watershed Impervious Estimates for Hydrologic Modeling & Water Quality
Track: Water Resources
Authors: Jon S. Perry, Sherry Phillips-Smith, Laurel Corrao

Sarasota County, interested in better understanding the relationship between the watershed characteristics and water quality, partnered with SCOPE (Sarasota County Openly Plans for Excellence) and New College of Florida to create an accurate 'Impervious' feature class through a combination of extracted features from current geodatabases and the use of analysis to identify additional impervious surfaces, i.e. parking lots, pavement and buildings. The result was compared to the original (~15 year old) planimetric estimates used for flood modeling. The process developed here will allow the County to keep its flood model current. In addition, comparisons were made between water quality data and the percent of impervious areas upstream to search for correlations. These results can aid in identify areas in need of stormwater treatment or highlighting the use of low impact development techniques and programs meant to reduce stormwater loads.