PHASE IV GIS-BASED SEDIMENT QUALITY DATABASE FOR THE ST. LOUIS RIVER AREA OF CONCERN—WISCONSIN FOCUS Quick Guide to the Phase IV ArcMap 9.1 Map Documents

Contaminated sediment issues in the St. Louis River Area of Concern (AOC) involve a complex interplay between watershed sources of contaminants, fate and transport mechanisms that affect the distribution, degradation, and enrichment of contaminants in the water column, sediments, and biota, and potential impacts to ecological and human health. Phase IV of a geographic information system (GIS)-based sediment quality database for the St. Louis River AOC has been developed to further expand the compilation of sediment quality data into Microsoft™ (MS™) Access '97/2000 databases, as well as in Query Manager-compatible database files (Crane and Myre 2006). The following sediment quality parameters were included in the databases: sediment chemistry, sediment toxicity, benthic invertebrate community structure, tissue residue chemistry data from fish tissues, invertebrates, and plants, and physical data (e.g., particle size). This phase of the database focused on entering sediment quality data from the Wisconsin side of the AOC into the database. Since most of the sediment quality data have geopositional coordinates (i.e., latitude and longitude) for where the sediment samples were collected, the data can be displayed on maps along with GIS watershed data. This mapping process allows users to visualize the data results and to view watershed data that may help users interpret the results (e.g., location of current and historical industries, wastewater treatment plants, landfills, marinas, and navigational channels, as well as information on watershed soils, aquatic and nearshore habitats, and hydrological features).