FLORIDA GEOGRAPHIC DATA LIBRARY DOCUMENTATION
VERSION 2004

TITLE: OUTSTANDING FLORIDA WATERS

Geodataset Name:       OFW_OTHER
Geodataset Type:       SHAPEFILE
Geodataset Feature:    POLYGON
GENERAL DESCRIPTION:
Boundaries for Outstanding Florida Waters (OFWs) as described in Section 62-302.700, F.A.C. This layer includes all three types of OFWs: OFW Aquatic Preserves, Special OFWs, and Other OFWs.
DATA SOURCE(S):                    Florida Department of Environmental Protection
SCALE OF ORIGINAL SOURCE MAPS:     24,000
DATE OF AUTOMATION OF SOURCE:      1996
GEODATASET EXTENT:                 State of Florida

FEATURE ATTRIBUTE TABLES:

Datafile Name: OFW_OTHER.dbf
ITEM NAME WIDTH TYPE N. DECIMAL DEGREES
FID
4 OID ---
SHAPE
0 Geometry ---
TYPE
16 String ---
NAME
60 String ---
ALT_NAME
60 String ---
RULE_ID
16 String ---
GIS_ID
6 Number ---
NOTES
254 String ---
SHAPE_AREA
19 Float 11
SHAPE_LEN
19 Float 11
SHAPE_FID
9 Number ---
DESCRIPT
50 String ---

FEATURE ATTRIBUTE TABLES CODES AND VALUES:

Item
Item Description
FID Internal feature number.

SHAPE Feature geometry.

TYPE Denotes category that water falls into.
special = special waters

Aquatic preserve = waters designated as a preserve

other = waters other than special or aquatic preserve


NAME Name as it appears in Section 62-302.700 F.A.C

ALT_NAME "Alternative" name for the given area.

RULE_ID No description

GIS_ID Feature geometry.

NOTES Additional info about designated water area.

SHAPE_AREA Area of feature in internal units squared.

SHAPE_LEN Internal feature number.

SHAPE_FID ID of internal feature

DESCRIPT Based on 'name'

USER NOTES:
GeoPlan relied on the integrity of the attribute information within the original data.

The legislature of the State of Florida established a category of surface water features called "Outstanding Florida Waters" that are to be protected from any degradation from their current water quality classification. A description of the water features eligible for inclusion as an OFW and a list of currently established OFWs is contained in Section 62-302.700, F.A.C., (Attachment 4). Additionally, "Waters" are defined in Section 403.031, F.S., as "... rivers, lakes, streams, springs, impoundments, and wetlands ... including fresh, brackish, saline, tidal, surface, and underground waters." Chapter 62-340, F.A.C., "Delineation of the Landward Extent of Wetlands and Surface Waters" details the plants and soil types that indicate the existence of wetland or surface water, under authority granted in Section 373.421, F.S.

Most of the OFWs are contained within the boundaries of publicly-owned lands managed for conservation and/or recreation so that the extent of the water features that are protected can be defined by the legal boundary of the park, recreation area, preserve, or other publicly-owned property. Three categories of OFWs do not have boundaries so described: 1) the three river segments designated as wild and scenic under the Florida Scenic and Wild Rivers Program, federal Wild and Scenic Rivers Act and the Myakka River Wild and Scenic Designation and Preservation Act; 2) the 16 streams or lakes in the National Forests, and 3) the 56 streams and lakes defined as Special Waters

As a portion of an Environmental Protection Agency Wetland Protection grant, a separate project to reduce the boundaries of the OFWs to a digital format was undertaken by the FDEP. Some digital data existed and was compiled from many different source formats and scales. These data were incorporated into a statewide coverage but because of the lack of documentation and concerns about accuracy, other approaches were investigated to improve portions of the data.

Other divisions within the FDEP have felt the need to develop digital coverages for the State-owned or managed properties they oversee and are in the process of reducing the legal descriptions on deeds into a digital form by interpreting and transferring the legal description to a quad sheet or using one or another of the COGO (COordinate GeOmetry) systems. These lands include the Aquatic Preserves and the State Park boundaries. Where possible, to minimize duplication of effort, the Division of Environmental Permitting either acquired the boundaries already created for the Aquatic Preserves, or entered into a joint venture to create boundaries for the 145 lands managed by the Division of Parks and Recreation.


A note concerning data scale:

Scale is an important factor in data usage. Certain scale 
datasetsare not suitable for some project, analysis, or
modelling purposes. Please be sure you are using the best
available data.

1:24000 scale datasets are recommended for projects that 
are at the county level.

1:24000 data should NOT be used for high accuracy base 
mapping such as property parcel boundaries.

1:100000 scale datasets are recommended for projects that 
are at the multi-county or regional level.

1:250000 scale datasets are recommended for projects that 
are at the regional or state level or larger.

Vector datasets with no defined scale or accuracy should 
be considered suspect. Make sure you are familiar with 
your data before using it for projects or analyses. Every 
effort has been made to supply the user with data 
documentation. For additional information, see the 
References sectionand the Data Source Contact section of 
this documentation. For more information regarding scale 
and accuracy, see our web pages at:

http://www.geoplan.ufl.edu/education.html
REFERENCES:
FDEP http://www.dep.state.fl.us/gis/datadir.asp
DATA LINEAGE SUMMARY:

OFW Aquatic Preserves Category:

Aquatic Preserve boundaries were created by the Florida Marine Research 
Institute (FMRI)/CAMRA.  We are using these boundaries to represent the OFWs 
that are also designated Aquatic Preserves 

Special OFW Category :

The streams and lakes that do not have defined legal boundaries were 
automated using methods other than transferring legal descriptions into a 
digital format.  Because of the interpretive nature of the boundaries for the 
Special Waters Category, we have avoided making any implication that this line 
represents the ordinary high water line that separates the State-owned lands 
from privately-owned lands by referring to this line as a fuzzy boundary or 
trip wire.  Final determinations of these boundaries will require on-site 
inspections or aerial photo-interpretations coupled with field verifications 
and will not be carried out for any of the streams and lakes designated as 
OFWs, in the short term.  These interpretive boundaries were designed to alert 
persons making land use decisions that on-site inspections or further 
investigations by qualified soils scientists or botanists may be necessary.  
These interpretive boundaries are necessary because if a proposed activity 
falls within or near an OFW boundary, different, more stringent permitting 
review standards are imposed on the permittee's application.   
 
The OFW Special Water boundary is based on the contour lines from the 
U.S. Geological  Survey 1:24000-scale quadrangle maps.  This boundary is 
labeled with the elevation of those contours that are most likely to meet the 
criteria of supporting obligate and facultative plants and hydric soils.  These 
elevations are 5 or 10 feet apart vertically, so that other information was 
used to modify the line.  Currently, the best additional information is a set 
of EOSAT satellite images from 1992.  The 1994 EOSAT imagery was also 
available, but because 1994 was an extremely wet year, the spectral reflectance 
values were judged less reliable. 
 
However, other indications that the area inside the Special Waters 
delineation line is likely to meet the rule's criteria are the swamp symbols on 
the quadrangle, the change in slope that is indicative of  the seepage line, or 
springs that indicate that the groundwater is near the surface at  that 
elevation.  Cultural features can also be helpful.  Roads often stop at wetted 
areas and buildings are usually (but not always) built above the elevation of 
the water feature's most frequent floods.  Similarly, railroads are usually 
built up high enough to stay dry.  This information is generally discernible on 
USGS 7.5 minute quadrangles. 

Other OFW Categories :

All other categories are taken from the Lands managed for Conservation 
created and compiled by GEOPLAN or have been created by us using descriptions 
from the Outstanding Florida Waters documentation.  Those boundaries created 
internally were scanned from published materials, registered and rectified with 
1:24,000 USGS Public Land Survey section corners.  Data was then extracted from 
USGS 1:24,000 hydrology layer and attributed.  For boundaries not completely 
represented by USGS 1:24,000 hydrology layer, arcs were digitized directly from 
the scanned material to complete the boundary. 
State Parks and Recreational Areas Category 

The COGO method has several advantages and disadvantages for use in 
producing a database for the OFWs.  It uses primary source material - the legal 
description on the deed.  Data created using this method should have validity 
within the legal system because it is from a source familiar to the courts.  
Other agencies are using the COGO system so it is a familiar process and 
product.  COGO methodology is appropriate in that it weds the new system for 
describing land ownership to the existing system.  Additionally, each parcel 
boundary will be maintained in a digital form and can be extracted from the 
official boundary as a parcel's status changes.  This data layer will also be 
maintained and updated by the stewards of all the state park boundaries data, 
so as the parcel boundaries change, the OFW boundaries will automatically be 
updated.  The downside is that COGO (or the survey data it automates) is labor 
intensive and requires extensive training and expertise to use.  Each legal 
description references source materials that may only be available locally or 
from the county appraiser's office, at a cost of travel and materials.  Each  
park boundary may have numerous parcels transferred to the state at different 
times and some parcel boundaries overlap. 
 
Legal descriptions were transferred to digital form using the COGO 
modules in  ESRI's ARC/INFO software on a UNIX platform DEC Alpha 3000 
workstation and Softdesk's ADDCAD Civil/Survey software on 486/90 DELL personal 
computers configured with 1 gigabyte storage memory, 32 megabytes of RAM, 17" 
VGA monitors and running DOS.  Both platforms are connected to HP-650C 
plotters.  See Standard COGO Procedures developed by the Division of Parks and 
Recreation.
Process Date: 1996

Librarian coverage transformed from NAD27 to HPGN using PROJECT command. Process Date: Spring 1997
Shapefile of this dataset was inserted into Spatial Database Engine. Process Date: Spring 1999
35 NULL and 305 'OUT PARCEL' records were removed at the request of Richard Butgereit and Kathleen Swanson of ERP. Process Date: October 2000
Layer recreated as one OFW layer from three separate OFW designation layers. Process Date: 12/18/02
Inserted data in shapefile format obtained from Ronald Hughes into ArcSDE. Process Date: 03/15/03
Inserted data in shapefile format obtained from Ronald Hughes into ArcSDE. Process Date: 06/23/04
Dataset copied. Process Date:
This dataset was downloaded by the GeoPlan Center from the FDEP website. In August of 2004 a QAQC was performed and thereafter the following steps were performed. -Added the field 'DESCRIPT' based on 'NAME'. -UPCASED all text in the attribute table. Process Date: 20040803

MAP PROJECTION PARAMETERS:

Projection                          ALBERS
Datum                               HPGN
Units                               METERS
Spheroid                            GRS1980
1st Standard Parallel               24  0  0.000
2nd Standard Parallel               31 30  0.000
Central Meridian                   -84 00  0.000
Latitude of Projection's Origin     24  0  0.000
False Easting (meters)              400000.00000
False Northing (meters)             0.00000

DATA SOURCE CONTACT (S):

Name:
Abbr. Name:
Address:


Phone:

Web site:
E-mail:
Contact Person:
         Phone:
        E-mail:
FDEP
2600 Blair Stone Rd, Twin Towers MS 6520
Tallahassee, FL
32399-2400
850/245-8238

http://www.dep.state.fl.us/gis/datadir.asp
FGDL CONTACT:
Name:                   FLORIDA GEOGRAPHIC DATA LIBRARY
Abbr. Name:             FGDL
Address:                Florida Geographic Data Library
                        431 Architecture Building
                        PO Box 115706
                        Gainesville, FL  32611-5706
Web site:               http://www.fgdl.org

Contact FGDL: 

      Technical Support:	        http://www.fgdl.org/fgdlfeed.html
      FGDL Frequently Asked Questions:  http://www.fgdl.org/fgdlfaq.html
      FGDL Mailing Lists:		http://www.fgdl.org/fgdl-l.html
      For FGDL Software:                http://www.fgdl.org/software.html