Wetlands Mapping

GeoSpatial Services is very experienced in the field of wetlands mapping. We have worked with a number of government agencies and private organizations. Our project areas have covered a wide geographic area. The wetlands specialists at GSS have mapped wetlands from the Alaskan tundra, to the farm fields of the Midwest, to the mangrove swamps of Florida. Our project areas cover diverse ecosystems. GSS has completed wetland mapping for over 100 million acres across the continental US and over 40 million acres in Alaska.

The typical wetlands mapping project uses on-screen digitizing to map wetlands based on aerial photography or satellite imagery. Auxiliary data, such as soils and topographic maps, are used to supplement the imagery. On occasion, hard copy stereo photos or a digital transfer scope are used to properly perform edits. All of the data GSS produces goes through a rigorous quality control process. This insures the data meets the client's specifications for both spatial and classification accuracy. We are well versed in the Cowardin wetlands classification system that is used by the US Fish and Wildlife Service as well as other systems such as the Wisconsin Wetland Inventory. Using this process GSS has mapped most of Iowa, a large portion of Lower Michigan, and huge areas of Alaska including the Yukon River delta and the National Petroleum Reserve Area. There have also been a large number of smaller projects too numerous to mention here. One example of a smaller project that GSS performed was the wetland mapping and wetland field checks of a pipeline corridor as part of the permitting process.

GeoSpatial Services has been a significant contributor to the US Fish and Wildlife Service Wetlands Status and Trends Program for a number of years. The Status and Trends program monitors changes in wetlands over time using sample plots. These plots are mapped using our on-screen digitizing methods. Twenty percent of the plots are then visited for the purposes of ground-truthing. To date, our photo interpreters have completed mapping and field work in approximately 20 different states.

Representative Sample of Projects