DEVELOPMENT OF THE MINNESOTA KARST FEATURE DATABASE FOR RESOURCE MANAGEMENT, HAZARD ASSESSMENT, AND HYDROLOGICAL INVESTIGATIONS

In the past two decades, a karst feature database (KFD) of southeastern Minnesota has been developed that allows karst feature distributions to be displayed and analyzed across existing county boundaries. The central Database Management System (DBMS) is a relational GIS-based system interacting with three modules: spatial operation, spatial analysis, and hydrogeology modules. The first KFD includes tabular data stored in Microsoft Access and a spatial component managed in ESRI ArcView. In recent years, the database was converted to a single, relational database with both tabular and spatial components edited in ESRI ArcMap. Read-only versions of the data are available in GIS format for public use via web services. A series of spatial analysis has been conducted to investigate spatial distributions of karst features and sinkhole hazard assessment using data stored in the KFD. The metadata developed in the Minnesota KFD has been adapted to inventory and study karst features at local and regional scales in many karst areas. Future development plans of the KFD include the implementation of the hydrogeology module by integrating water chemistry, hydrograph, and dye tracing data and the delineation of karst features into more manageable units.