SMSC land intersects a number of watersheds including Prior Lake, Lower Sand Creek, and the city of Shakopee-Minnesota River HUC 12. The SMSC is fortunate to steward a diverse natural area, including numerous wetlands of different types and in various states of ecological health. The Community recognizes the important cultural and environmental values provided by wetlands—and the challenges that exist to protect these features in an ever-changing landscape, especially one developing as rapidly as Scott County.
In 2023, the SMSC finalized their Wetland Program Plan with support from the Environmental Protection Agency’s Wetland Program Development Grant. They also worked with contractors to produce an updated wetland inventory and potentially restorable GIS wetland layer, a new wetland rapid assessment method that included cultural values and created a Wetland Identification Model (WIM) that can be used to update the SMSC wetland and surface water inventory with Light Detection and Ranging (lidar) data collected with the SMSC drone-mounted lidar system.
To communicate wetland priorities, an SMSC wetland portal was created using dashboards within ArcGIS Hub, a geospatial platform. This allows staff to easily share wetland information within the SMSC and with other stakeholders.
The 2023-2027 SMSC Wetland Program PlanStaff also worked with contractors to create a method to identify wetland threats and stressors. This included producing a land cover dataset with nine different land cover classes. This land cover dataset serves as the foundation for the SMSC’s threats and stressors analysis, a decision matrix that will aid in wetland prioritization and restoration work.
The SMSC has also completed several large wetland restorations throughout the Community, improving water quality, wildlife habitat, and reintroducing wild rice (psiŋ) and important wetland species for cultural practices.
