INSTITUTE FOR FISHERIES RESOURCES GIS TECHNICAL WORK GROUP -- GIS METADATA LIBRARY: Garcia/Navarro/Russian/WMarinSonoma/NorthBay COVERAGE NAME: nwcal_pesticide_2001.shp METADATA FILE: nwcal_pesticide_2001.shp.txt METADATA FILE DATE: August 26, 2003 METADATA PREPARER: Eli Asarian Institute for Fisheries Resources (IFR) 791 Eighth Street Ste. N Arcata, CA 95521 (707) 822-9428 http://www.krisweb.com COVERAGE DESCRIPTION: This shapefile contains a summary of the 2001 California Pesticide Use Reporting Database, hard-joined to Public Land Survey sections (pls.shp). The California Pesticide Use Reporting Database is assembled by the California Department of Pesticide Regulation and county agricultural commissioners. Methods: This shapefile was assembled from 2 sources: The 2001 California Pesticide Use Reporting Database and the Public Land Survey GIS. The Pesticide Database was obtained by KRIS from Jennifer Kalt of the California Indian Basket weavers Association on CD-ROM as text databases. For detailed information on the structure of the database, read the guide that comes with the CD-ROM ("pesticide_dpr_cd_guide.pdf" in the krisdb/map/metadata folder). It is a statewide database, but data in this shapefile includes only five California counties: Marin, Sonoma, Humboldt, Trinity, and Mendocino. Pesticide applicators are required to submit data to county agricultural commissioners, who submit it the to Department of Pesticide Regulation. The dataset is compiled annually and CDs are released to the public each year (available on the DPR website for $10). The minimum mapping resolution of the database is Public Land Survey Sections (approximately 1 square mile), but no location (beyond county name) is not reported for areas that do not have a Section. Many prime agricultural lands in northern California were originally part of the Mexican/Spanish land grants, which do not have Sections, and are therefore pesticides used in such areas cannot be traced to a particular location and cannot be mapped. Due to the limits of the geographic extent of the database, it is best used to look at the relative quantities of the different pesticides that are applied in the watershed and on which crops they are being applied, rather than to look at the absolute amounts used. Some county agricultural commissioners maintain parcel-level GIS layers that could greatly enhance geographic accuracy and fill the geographic gaps in database. The Sonoma County Agricultural Commissioner's office maintains a parcel-level database, but was unwilling to share it in KRIS. MS Access was used to concatenate the MERIDIAN, TOWNSHIP, RANGE, and SECTION fields into a field called MTRS, and also to run some queries to summarize the database so that there would be a one-to-one relationship between the PLS and the Pesticide Database. An ArcView Join, and then a Convert to Shapefile command was used to join the PLS to the Pesticide Database using the MTRS field as the common field. The Public Land Survey GIS data was downloaded from the Internet at: http://casil.ucdavis.edu/casil/gis.ca.gov/teale/plsa/ It was reprojected from Albers to UTM Zone 10, NAD 27 using ArcView's Projection Utility Wizard, I reprojected it . For more detailed information on the PLS GIS, see the metadata file pls.shp.txt. VITAL STATISTICS: Datum: NAD 27 Projection: UTM Units: Meters 1st Std. Parallel: 34 00 00 (34.0 degrees N) 2nd Std. Parallel: 40 30 00 (40.5 degrees N) Longitude of Origin: -120 00 00 (120.0 degrees W) Latitude of Origin: 00 00 00 (0.0 degrees) False Easting (X shift): 0 False Northing (Y shift): 0 Source: see notes above Data Structure: Vector (line) DATA DICTIONARY: NOTE: Items common to all ARC/INFO coverages: LENGTH, AREA, PERIMETER COVER_ (#), and COVER _ID (-ID) are not described here. Structure for attribute table COLUMN ITEM NAME ----------------------- 1 PLSA# 2 PLSA-ID 3 SECTION 4 MERIDIAN 5 TOWNSHIP 6 RANGE 7 SOURCE 8 COMMENT 9 LANDGRANT 10 TOWN-RANGE 11 MTRS 12 SUBBASIN 13 KRIS_PRJCT 14 KRIS_PRJCT 15 SUBBASIN 16 LBS_CHM_U 17 LBS_PRD_U 18-236 LBS_ [CHEM_CODE] PLSA#: The software-assigned unique integer identification number. PLSA-ID: A user-assigned identification number. SECTION: Section number (less than 36) MERIDIAN: Name of the baseline and meridian TOWNSHIP: Township number and ordinal direction (N = north, S = south) RANGE: Range number and ordinal direction (E=east, W=west) SOURCE: Unused at this time. COMMENT: Description of the polygon if not a surveyed section or landgrant. LANDGRANT: Name of the landgrant, if any. TOWN-RANGE: Concatenation of Township followed by Range. MTRS: Concatenation of MERIDIAN, TOWNSHIP, RANGE, and SECTION SUBBASIN: Name of the Hydrologic sub-basin (in a KRIS Project, if any) where the MTRS is located. If MTRS straddles two or more sub-basins, it was randomly placed into one by ArcView KRIS_PRJCT: Name of the KRIS Project (if any) where the MTRS is located. If MTRS straddles two or more KRIS projects, it was randomly placed into one by ArcView LBS_CHM_U: Pounds of the active ingredient (AI) in the applied product. The specific AI is identified in the CHEM_CODE field. LBS_PRD_U : Pounds of product applied. The pounds of product applied can include products applied to soil, commodities, etc. LBS_ [CHEM_CODE]: Pounds of chemical (active ingredient) applied. There is one column in the attribute table for each of the 218 most commonly used chemicals in the five counties included in this shapefile, with the end of the field name being the CHEM_CODE for a particular chemical. For instance, the field LBS_385 contains the total pounds of Methyl Bromide used in each MTRS. A key to CHEM_CODE is contained in the CHEM table or in the KRIS source table "pesticide_rus_dpr_2001_lbs_chem268.dbf". These fields were calculated using MS Access querries, and then was linked back into the attribute table. DATA QUALITY ASSESSMENT: As with any enormous database, there are undoubtedly errors in the Pesticide Use Reporting Database. The quanitity of data is massive and self-reported. Quality control software is applied to catch obvious outliers. If errors are found after release, corrections are issued via the DPR website. Accuracy will also vary by county, as the county agricultural commissioners first assemble the data before sending it to the state.