March 26, 2016 - Located Precision Depth Measurement Data

Post date: Mar 27, 2016 1:17:22 AM

I was working on research for my own depth map project and found an excellent blog on mapping lake bottoms. The blog was created by the NAVICO company, who owns the Lowrance and SIMRAD companies, that make depth finders and sonar units. So I emailed them and got a call back from a friendly company representative. The rep pointed me to their "Insight Genesis Go Free Social Map" site where Lowrance and SIMRAD owners can submit their own data collections and create maps to share with others. Come to find out, there is an extensive data collection project already in progress on Stillwater Reservoir, but I have no idea who is collecting the data.

I've included an example image below, but if you want to see the data, go to the Social Map page. Use the map to zoom down to the reservoir, where there is a blue icon over the center of the reservoir, near Loon Lake. Click on the blue icon, and in the resultant pop-up bubble, click the "View" link. Then zoom in further to see the full detail of the contour depth data. The rep also said whoever is collecting this data is "really doing it well, better than most". He said this "high quality of collection data is quite rare" in their social map system. Not only has this person already covered a good portion of the reservoir, but they have even input the correct offsets for the reservoir level on each collection day. It seems like the person is normalizing their data to a 1675 foot water height, despite collecting data in water heights up to a 5 foot difference from that value. The rep gave me a bit of anonymized information about the data collections. The three sets of data were all collected in the summer of 2015, in the last week of May (Memorial Day), July 4th weekend, and August 15th. Judging by the areas that were covered (lots of nooks and crannies, and shallow areas), this definitely seems like a dedicated project to collect depth data, and not someone who is simply collecting data while they're out fishing.

As good as the data looks, there is a drawback. The downloadable map data on the Social Map page is only available to those people that own Lowrance or SIMRAD units. To put it bluntly, the units are expensive, and they are also single purpose systems for use on a boat. I'm curious if the data collector knows about this Stillwater Navigation site? I'm also curious if they still have the source files from their depth finder that were uploaded to create these maps? I would like to ask this person to please share their data with me in order to further this project, and make your data available to everyone. I am planning to buy the Reefmaster software soon anyway for my depth project. I could use this source data in Reefmaster, and create output files that everyone could utilize on their mobile devices , not just on Lowrance and SIMRAD units. I could also create customized map sets for every 1 or 2 foot change in water height, so you could load the map that matches the reservoir height that day. This would save me a lot of time on my depth measurement project as well, allowing me to only focus on the areas they haven't covered yet. If they plan on continuing to collect more data this summer, I might not even have to do it myself.

One other interesting thing, is some of the isolated ponds and lakes north of the reservoir in the Five Ponds Wilderness have also been mapped. I'm not sure if it's the same person that mapped the reservoir or not, but some of those are quite difficult to reach. It seems that maybe this project was done on a canoe or kayak? I have to think in some spots at least.

If you are the person collecting this data, or have an idea of who this person might be, please contact me using the email, or Google Plus links in the left column of this site. I would love to hear from you, and hopefully you still have your source data files, and are willing to share them. Whoever you are, thanks for taking the time and effort to collect such a wonderful data set!