Back to top

OR&R’s St. Louis River Data System Project

APRIL 7, 2017--Annie Gibbs, of the OR&R Assessment and Restoration Division presented on OR&R’s St. Louis River Data System project at the St. Louis River Summit in Duluth, MN, on March 14-15 and EPA’s Great Lakes Areas of Concern Conference in Grand Rapids, MI, on March 29-30.

The project is a partnership between NOAA, the State of Minnesota and the State of Wisconsin. The two states jointly manage the St. Louis River Area of Concern (AOC) in Duluth, MN. An AOC is a geographic area within the Great Lakes Basin that shows severe environmental degradation as identified by the United States Environmental Protection Agency and Environment Canada under the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement. Managers from both states recognized a need for an improved data management system for remediation and restoration decision-making.

The states of Minnesota and Wisconsin listed the following requirements for their data management system: accessible, flexible queries, user friendly, includes a data visualization component, integration of diverse data types, and the ability to continually update the system with new data. The states identified OR&R’s Great Lakes Data Integration, Visualization, Exploration and Reporting (DIVER) data system as capable of meeting all the user needs. Over the past few years, OR&R’s Spatial Data Branch, led by Ben Shorr, and one of ARD’s Great Lakes Regional Resource Coordinators (Annie Gibbs), have worked with managers and technical staff from Minnesota and Wisconsin to tailor the functions of Great Lakes DIVER to the specific needs of the St. Louis River AOC.

This project is funded through the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative.

For additional information contact Annie.Gibbs@noaa.gov or Benjamin.Shorr@noaa.gov.

Go back to OR&R Weekly Report.

Body of water with sticks, projecting up, and visible above the surface.
The Grassy Point site was identified by the St. Louis River AOC managers for remediation and restoration to move the estuary towards recovery. Image credit: NOAA.
Last updated Tuesday, November 8, 2022 1:52pm PST