Watersheds (Catchments) of DuPage County | |
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Metadata elements shown with blue text are defined in the Federal Geographic Data Committee's (FGDC) Content Standard for Digital Geospatial Metadata (CSDGM). Elements shown with green text are defined in the ESRI Profile of the CSDGM. Elements shown with a green asterisk (*) will be automatically updated by ArcCatalog. ArcCatalog adds hints indicating which FGDC elements are mandatory; these are shown with gray text.
Watersheds of DuPage County as originally provided by the DuPage County Department of Environmental Concerns, and re-interpretted and value added by the Forest Preserve district of DuPage County. The watersheds coverage is composed of areal feature types, both polygons and regions. Each polygon represents a catchment drainage area - a minumum area for watershed planning purposes. (Watershed planning areas are based upon, but do not strictly conform to, natural watersheds.) Contiguous, non-overlapping sets of catchments comprise tributary drainages. Contiguous, non-overlapping sets of tributaries comprise riverbasins. The word watershed is used herein to mean any of these notions of drainage area. However, this hierarchical arrangement is modified geographically to fit the Department’s management planning areas thus: 1) several natural watersheds are artifically terminated at the County boundary, regardless of the flow direction, 2) some tributaries extend outside of the County to an arbitrary delineation (usually short of a riverbasin’s headwaters), and 3) some watershed planning areas include portions of neighboring riverbasins. The major riverbasin watersheds of the County are the East and West Branches of the DuPage River and Salt and Sawmill Creeks (tributaries of the Des Plaines River). The remaining territory of the County is drained into the Fox and Des Plaines Rivers. The watershed planning areas that include portions of neighboring riverbasins are as follows: Watershed Planning Area ...includes a tributary of Watershed Planning Area West Branch of DuPage River FoxRiver Tributaries East Branch of DuPage River DesPlaines (River) Tributaries Sawmill Creek DesPlaines (River) Tributaries Salt Creek DesPlaines (River) Tributaries The watersheds coverage also has two sets of region features. These are the tributary watersheds and the riverbasin watersheds. Each of these is merely a superset of the catchment polygon feature, as described above.
This coverage serves as the Department’s official delineation of its Watershed Planning Areas for planning and modeling purposes.
publication date
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421 North County Farm Rd
Accuracy of attributes varies with a given attribute. For example, the correctness of the PAT's SHD_CODE is very good since it forms the basis of many consequent data processing operations and filing schemes. On the other hand, the PAT's DS_CATCH and MODEL attributes are, to date, not even populated with values. Accuracy of graphic feature codes based on source material.
Standard County quality assurance and checking has been performed.County assumes no liability for possible consistency errors. Please report any errors to the data custodian.
All Department Watershed Planning Areas are represented. These Areas generally conform to natural watershed basins with notable exceptions: 1) For the Des Plaines and Fox River Tributaries, the Planning Areas often terminate at the County boundary, 2) For the Salt Creek Riverbasin, only the Lower Salt Creek portion is included for Departmental purposes (the Upper Salt Creek Riverbasin, which reaches across Cook County into Lake County, is planned by the Northern Illinois Planning Commission), 3) The Fox River Tributary named Spring Brook #2 is included in the West Branch of the DuPage River Riverbasin, 4) The Des Plaines River Tributary named Lily Cache is included in the East Branch of the DuPage River Riverbasin, 5) The Des Plaines River Tributary named Addison Creek is included in the Salt Creek Riverbasin (bear in mind that Salt Creek itself is tributary to the Des Plaines River), and 6) The Des Plaines River Tributaries named Black Partridge Creek and the river's Main Stem watershed are included in the Sawmill Creek Riverbasin (bear in mind that Sawmill Creek itself is tributary to the Des Plaines River).
Catchment boundary positional accuracy is variable and is a matter of judgement and utility among many users at DEC. Most of the delineations were developed from USGS 1:24,000 topographic quadrangles with topographic content of vintage 1954 to 1964.
Internal feature number.
ESRI
Feature geometry.
ESRI
Area of feature in internal units squared.
ESRI
Perimeter of feature in internal units.
ESRI
Internal feature number.
ESRI
User-defined feature number.
ESRI
Watershed Planning Area name for a tributary's catchment
Size of the watershed in acres
Watershed Planning Area name for a riverbasin's tributary
Watershed Planning Area name for a riverbasin
421 North County Farm Rd
The County assumes no liability for the use or misuse of the data.
421 North County Farm Rd