North Carolina Water Supply Watershed Boundaries and Classifications

North Carolina water supply watershed boundaries delineate protected and critical areas with special development restrictions. The North Carolina Department of Environment, Health, and Natural Resources created this data for GIS-based resource management. Updates were documented through April 1996.

Use Cases

• Identify watersheds with 'WS-III NSW' or 'WS-IV' stream classifications to enforce specific land-use regulations.
• Analyze changes in protected area boundaries, such as the Upper French Broad River watershed, to track regulatory adoption status over time.
• Map critical areas around intakes like Reedy Fork or Belews Creek for development impact assessments.
• Use watershed names and county attributes (e.g., Buncombe, Henderson) to filter and analyze regional water supply protections.

Strengths

• Contains both protected and critical area boundaries with associated stream classifications.
• Includes documented revisions showing specific watershed edits from 1995 to 1996.

Limitations

• Data is temporally stale, with the last documented update from April 1996.
• Specific row count, column details, and geographic completeness are unknown from the description.

Provenance

Source

North Carolina Department of Environment, Health, and Natural Resources, Division of Environmental Management.

Collection Method

Digitally developed in cooperation with the NC Center for Geographic Information and Analysis for GIS use.

Time Range

Update history documented from 1995 to 1996.

Freshness

Updated as changes occur, with last documented revision in April 1996.

Geography

State of North Carolina, USA, with mentions of specific counties and quad areas.