National park wraps up three years of stream mapping
A three-year stream-mapping project in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park is now complete, revealing new information about the park’s water resources.
Using a combination of aircraft-mounted scanners and a Global Positioning System verification system, scientists determined that the park holds 2,900 miles of stream, 1,073 miles of which are large enough to support fish. That’s a considerable jump from the previous estimate of 2,000 miles of stream in the park.
The new data is now part of the National Hydrology Dataset, which allows anyone real-time access to information about streams across the nation. The information is useful to park staff and research partners to manage park water quality and aquatic ecosystem health.
Park scientists collaborated with the U.S. Geological Survey and scientists from North Carolina and Tennessee to complete the project. The NHD data is online at viewer.nationalmap.gov/viewer, and an updated map of park streams is online at www.nps.gov/npmap/park-tiles/#10/35.6032/-83.4659.
