2016 WLIA Annual Conference

Finding potentially restorable wetlands (PRWs) has favored those areas that reside in soil map units labeled 'hydric soils' in the NRCS Soils layer. Yet there are thousands of acres that could also be utilized for wetland restoration in partially hydric soils, short of taking the whole map unit from the NRCS soils data, these wetter areas inside of the larger unit have been largely undefined. This GIS process has now been applied across all of the counties of the state and is in final field verification of the data. This talk focuses on the process, caveats and output of the data.
Two methods currently exist for deriving Ralph Tiner's landscape level 'National Wetlands Inventory Plus' (NWI+) attributes for Wisconsin wetlands. The first involves directly classifying wetland attributes using remotely-sensed imagery. This requires considerable staff-time and individual expertise. The second involves performing a crosswalk between the Wisconsin Wetlands Inventory (WWI) and the National Wetlands Inventory (NWI), which can then be supplemented with NWI+ attributes. While it is possible to automate this process, it is prone to inaccuracy since it relies on multiple conversions between different classification systems.
The automated approach being developed by the WI Department of Natural Resources (DNR) in conjunction with the Nature Conservancy (TNC) aims to bypass conversions and manual classification via a set of landscape models that uses existing datasets, including the Wisconsin 24K hydro database, the compound topographic index, the NRCS SSURGO soils layer, and best available elevation data to apply NWI plus attributes to both the WWI and the statewide Potentially Restorable Wetlands layer (PRW).