Credit Island Harbor - Environmental Degradation From Prolonged/Frequent Flooding 8-5-2014 Photos

First I'd like to point out a new feature on both of my blogs over on the right --------->
That's live data from my personal weather station and if you click on it it will take you to my personal weather station webpage on Weather Underground. I'm getting ready to 'retire' the original Netbook2Chartplotter at least as a chartplotter and it will have other duties such as logging data from the weather station and sending it over the internet. I'll blog over the winter on it's replacement, a Lenovo Win 8.1 Pro tablet and how I'll use my old one for new duties as well as an emergency backup.

UPDATE Oct. 1 ,2014

I have to give credit where credit is due although it's really a better late than never kinda deal. The city after 5 years has finally fixed the boat ramp approach while they we resurfacing the parts of South Concord that were underwater long periods of time this year. It's definitely a lot easier to get a trailer in there now.

Anyway to the main gist of this post, the continued environmental degradation to Credit Island Harbor which is not only a major cause of silting especially along the shoreline but also how lack of bank protection like on the island itself is wiping out the remaining trees, the only bank protection between the harbor and the road bed. First up the area around the boat ramp and dock

This area was almost entirely covered with asphalt a few years ago

And where did all that asphalt and gravel end up? It's all in the harbor just off shore .....

These are looking upstream towards River Drive. You can see some of the emergency bank reinforcement the City put in.

These are from between the boat ramp and the bicycle bridge and there is some heavy damage here with about 1-2 feet thick layer of soil removed the prolonged flooding last two years exposing the tree roots and causing the remaining trees to die or start leaning towards the water. Lot's of yellow and brown leaves which in early August indicates that the trees are dying. Even the green leaves are more of a lime or yellow-green than the dark green leaves on the trees further from the water.

When they built the bicycle bridge they restored the old bank levels and then rip rapped it so it kind of juts out and is higher than the bank just upstream. This is the outside of a bend in a side channel so this is where the current is the strongest when it comes over the road/causeway at the entrance to the island. An eddy forms here whenever the water is high and it's really eaten away at the bank and it's dug clear back to the road bed.

Most of the rest are downstream of the bicycle bridge and show all the yellowing and browning of leaves of dying trees as well how many of them are leaning and will fall into the harbor in the near future. A lot of these trees aren't going to make it unfortunately and the bank erosion and silting of the harbor will get even worse and happen even faster

Here you can see where a mud bar is forming just before it narrows before it gets to the main channel of the river

This area is going to look very very different in 5-10 years if something isn't done and soon. It's a problem that illustrates the effects of Climate Change that has caused a 37% increase in rainfall in the upper Midwest as well has caused the frequency of 17ft or greater floods (Moderate to Severe flooding) to increase by a whooping 300+% in the last 22 years.

New Blog - The Lost Grove Lake Mapping Project

I've started a new blog documenting the now over half full Lost Grove Lake in Scott County, Iowa. I'll be posting photos of the filling process that I took earlier this year and any new ones in the future. You can find the new blog here Posts on general mapping and boat electronics will still go on this blog but near record flooding since April of this year has kept me off the river and it'll be at least another 2 weeks before the river drops, stabilizes and cleans up. Due to Climate Change I can no longer depend on the Mississippi River to be a dependable source of fishing and boating anymore because the floods due to Extreme Rainfall are getting larger, more frequent and last 2-3 times longer and the last two years over half the fishing season has been completely wasted so this new lake couldn't come at a better time.

A New Toy ...er, I Mean New Tool

Here are some screen captures and videos of the test run for my new Vexilar Sonar Phone T-Pod using a Nexus 7 (2012) running Kit Kat 4.4.2 and test it's new screen recording API. Although the videos get a little jerky in places because the recording software is dropping frames (Limitations of the ARM processor) it's smooth as silk 'live'.

First some screen caps and a video of the first run. The water (Mississippi River) was on the rise and full of crud plus it was very windy so there is a lot of surface noise. Lowering the gain to 25-30% helped a lot

 The next set I found out that if you want to record in landscape mode you need to be in landscape mode when you start the recording. Unfortunately that wasn't readily apparent until after I got home since there is no hint of a problem on the screen. The opening/set up screen of the Vexilar software starts in the portrait mode which is why I had it turned in portrait mode when I started the video recording.

I went over to the other side and this run shows how easy it is to get up and running once the T-Pod is the the water long enough to turn itself on.  None of these videos were edited and are in their raw format.

This unit seems to work well and on par with dedicated color fishfinders in the $200-300 range. The WiFi worked as far as I was able to cast and I only lost the hook up once and that's when it was in the rocks along the shore. I would say the main limiting factor will be the sunlight visibility of the LCD on the phone or tablet used. I had to find some shade on the Nexus 7 to see the screen decently(Same reason I have a 'PC Hood' on my chartplotter)

Introducing: The Lost Grove Lake Mapping Project

We have a new lake here just northeast of Davenport that is slowly filling right now called Lost Grove Lake. It's been 25+ years in the making but it's a well designed lake within a well managed Watershed to keep silt and fertilizer runoff from getting into the lake which will be 350 acres and 3 miles long when full. I plan on making detailed depth, structure and 3D depth maps of the lake but still need a preliminary map and background maps. The 3 base maps were downloaded as geotiff's in 6 parts each from the Iowa Geographic Map Server and 'stitched' together using the OziExplorer Map Merge program and I recalibrated them using Geotiff Tools. Here are the 3 base maps as uncalibrated half size JPEG's.

The Topo Map Layer

The Photo Map Layer

The LIDAR Layer

From the Topo and Photo layers I was able to derive this Lake Depth overlay, the black areas surrounding the lake are really transparent

I can then overlap this layer on top of the Photo and Topo layers and get these maps

And finally by using the LIDAR layer as the base, changing the transparency of the Photo and Topo layers to 65% and then overlaying the Lake layer I get the following two maps

The next layer I am going to make is denoting all the structure both natural and manmade. By using Geotiff layers I can edit a layer without upsetting the geo-referencing or upsetting the other layers. Then I can 'mix and match' them to make nice Geotiff calibrated maps that are importable/convertible to most GPS navigation and mapping software without the need for hand calibration

Since Blogger nor any web photo viewer can do these justice by displaying them in full resolution I've got them shared on my Google Drive. There are half and full size JPG's of maps in this post plus the 4 full sized TIF's that have the geotif header and should work in any GIS or GPS mapping software that accepts or imports geotif's

Geotiff & JPG Layers.zip

More to come ......

Depth Maps of Pool 16 Mississippi River

Making depth maps for a river is always problematic due to the constantly changing water levels. So what I do when I make these maps which were made over a period of several trips is to get the water level at Lock and Dam 15 just up river a bit and name the data by Location, Date, and river level. Then I can take each trip data individually and load it into Dr Depth and subtract whatever level is in the title and save it as Location, Date, Zero Gauge. I put all of these into a database which load them all and then I just adjust the data down for whatever river level I need. Most of the following maps were made in 2011 with some data added in 2012. All maps set for a river level of 5.0 ft at Lock and Dam 15

First up in 4 parts is the depth maps of the lower 2/3 of Credit Island Harbor

Now here is the area of the bicycle bridge from 2011 and after it was finished in Fall of 2012. It's more than obvious that it does NOT meet the standard set forth in US Army Corps of Engineers Nationwide Permit # 14 which CLEARLY and UNEQUIVOCALLY states that:

"Temporary fills must be removed in their entirety and the affected areas returned to pre-construction elevations. The areas affected by temporary fills must be revegetated, as appropriate."

How anyone could have signed off on this Mess in Good Faith is beyond me

So much for 21st Century Yuppies and their "Feel Good" environmental projects ....

Here are a couple of the wingdam off the tip of Credit Island down to the I-280 bridge

And the same maps in 3D which I use to locate current breaks and seams for catching flathead catfish. I've caught a dozen or so in this area since 2010 between 25 and 37 pounds. It used to be a good spot for channels cats in the yellow and orange areas along the shore which is a gravel and sand bar but has been ruined by people dumping their garbage there because enforcement and fines are so weak it just doesn't stop them.

Here are some of the wingdam just below the I-280 bridge. Most of this data is from Walleye Master Fisherman Bruce "Doctor Sonar" Samson. If you want to learn the ins and outs of Lowrance fishfinder and gps mapping devices this is the place you go.

This is a little further downstream just across from Horse (Enchanted) Island. It's a normal wingdam at a right angle to the river and a closing wingdam that goes downstream (left) to another regular wingdam

These really don't do justice to these maps when they are used live on the water, I've got some software that records the screen like a movie and I'll try to make so live usage videos this summer. I also have a new toy that I'll introduce in a couple of weeks, basically a WiFi fishfinder that uses an Android or Apple phone or tablet as the screen which I'll be able to get screen shots to embed in the waypoints of my maps. I'm also going to introduce a new project in the next day or two.