Selawik National Wildlife Refuge, Alaska

GSS staff (Andy Robertson and John Anderson) and the NWI Region 7 Coordinator (Julie Michaelson) spent nine days doing pre-mapping fieldwork for the Selawik National Wildlife Refuge in northwestern Alaska. The crew traveled the approximately 2.15 million acre project area by helicopter to verify satellite images of wetlands in the coastal plain, tundra, and mountainous areas. Over 200 different wetland sites were visited making it a priority to document the present plant species, and how water is moving and sitting in the wetlands landscape. This documentation is then used to develop a guidance to later remotely delineate and classify these wetland features.

 

GSS Staff at World's Largest GIS Conference

Environmental Systems Research Institute (Esri) produces the most widely used software for GIS. GSS and Saint Mary's University of Minnesota use this software to do much of their work. This year’s annual conference for international users was held during July 10-14, 2017. This five-day event held at the San Diego Convention Center exposes approximately sixteen-thousand Esri software users to over one thousand presentations, hundreds of hours of available training sessions, and over three hundred exhibitors. Topics that employ GIS in this conference can range from Archeology and Agriculture, from Petroleum to Public Health, to and Water Resources and Wildland Fire.

Two staff members from GSS attended and presented at this conference. Kevin Stark, Project Manager at GSS, presented on an ongoing project to build a website to communicate tribal wetland importance using Esri Story Maps. Kevin Benck, a GIS Analyst at GSS, gave two different presentations. His first presentation covered a recently completed online Story Map on Wetland Jewels on Santa Fe National Forest lands in New Mexico. His other presentation was on how GSS is working with Douglas County, Wisconsin environmental staff to incorporate data from a wetland functional assessment, recently completed by GSS, into a decision support matrix used to set wetland preservation, enhancement, and restoration priorities and support ongoing and future watershed planning efforts in the county. Both staff members also were busy at the conference learning from Esri staff and other users through the available presentations, direct technical expertise discussions, and demonstrations. Some of the topics that were their focus included watershed, stream networks, and floodplain mapping techniques; ArcMap Editing tips and tricks; LiDAR and GIS applications; ArcGIS Pro; Portal for ArcGIS; and many other topics.

SW Idaho/SE Oregon BLM Fieldwork

GSS staff members (Hannah Hutchins, Andy Robertson, John Anderson, and Kevin Stark) spent a week (June 5 - June 9) doing pre-mapping fieldwork for the Bureau of Land Management Wetland and Riparian Area Mapping and Assessment Project. The crew traveled approximately 2,000 miles across high plains and rugged mountain terrain. Over 150 different wetland sites were visited making it a priority to document the present plant species; how water is moving through and sitting in the wetland landscape; and what, if any, surrounding land use practices are potentially affecting the wetland feature at hand. 

With the pre-mapping fieldwork complete, GSS will begin remotely mapping the ~3.5 million acre study area (100 USGS quads). Once mapping and classifying these arid west wetlands is complete, a wetland functional assessment will be performed to determine the water quality and habitat functions the wetlands can provide to the surrounding ecosystem. 

Northwest Minnesota NWI Update: Spring 2017 Fieldwork

From May 7th through the 12th, GSS staff members of the Northwest MN NWI Update team headed up to the north country for another fieldwork trip. Eric Lindquist, Nick Lemcke, and John Anderson traveled around the project area summarizing characteristics of wetlands, investigating typical and atypical imagery signatures, and validating completed wetland data.

The Northwest MN project area covers the following 19 counties: Becker, Clay, Clearwater, Douglas, Grant, Kittson, Lake of the Woods, Mahnomen, Marshall, Norman, Otter Tail, Pennington, Polk, Pope, Red Lake, Roseau, Stevens, Traverse, and Wilkin. The NWI update started in fall 2016 and is scheduled to be completed in Fall 2018. This project will result in an update of 25 to 30-year-old wetland data and be integrated into the nation-wide NWI database, which is managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS). NWI data can be viewed on the USFWS National Mapper; wetland data updated by GSS can be found here.

River Rally 2017

GSS Director Andy Robertson is presenting at the 2017 River Rally Conference in Grand Rapids Michigan with Rachel Conn of Amigos Bravos and Erik Schlenker-Goodrich of Western Environmental Law Center. They will be presenting on The Wetland Jewels Campaign, a wetland protection program in New Mexico.

From the River Rally Agenda:

The Wetland Jewels Campaign utilizes wetland mapping, stakeholder engagement, and policy advocacy to identify and protect priority wetland resources. Learn how to use GIS wetland data, story maps, and advocacy in planning processes such as National Forest Plan Revisions to protect the crown jewels of your watershed.

Kenai Peninsula Fish Habitat Partnership Science Symposium

On April 5th through the 6th 2017, Jeff Knopf of GSS traveled to Sterling Alaska to present at the Kenai Peninsula Fish Habitat Partnership Science Symposium on the National Hydrography Dataset (NHD) updates that were completed by GSS staff and students on the Kenai Peninsula in partnership with the Kenai Watershed Forum. Jeff's presentation ranged from the overall need for NHD updates across Alaska to the specific process of updating the NHD on the Kenai Peninsula. Jeff also informed attendees at the conference on topics such as NHD requirements and processing to the enhanced NHDPlus database, along with ways to better collaborate with the community to inform them of the work being done to maintain healthy salmon habitats.

 

EPA Tribal Environmental Program Management Conference

GSS Project Manager Kevin Stark traveled to Chicago to co-present at the EPA's 2017 Tribal Environmental Program Management Conference. Conference attendees included tribal environmental programs across EPA's Region 5, which covers 40 federally-recognized tribes in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan. 

Kevin presented with Angela Waupochick, the Stockbridge-Munsee Community's hydrologist. GSS is currently working with the Stockbridge-Munsee community on a project to incorporate Esri Story Maps, an online and interactive application that combines maps and storytelling, into a website to aid in local outreach to the Stockbridge-Munsee tribal community members and the general public.

ASWM Annual Sate/Tribal/Federal Coordination Meeting

GSS Director, Andy Robertson, presented at the annual Association of State Wetland Managers (ASWM) conference, "Using Sound Science and Effective Communication to Strengthen Wetland Conservation, Restoration and Management", on April 12th, 2017. The conference was designed so agencies across the nation could gather to present their work and share ideas on wetland-related topics. The entire conference lasted from April 11th through the 13th, 2017 and was held in Shepherdstown, West Virginia. 

GSS Staff Travel to National Seashore

In early March 2017, Andy Nadeau and Kathy Allen of GSS visited Cumberland Island National Seashore off the coast of southern Georgia to kick off a Natural Resource Condition Assessment (NRCA) for the park. GSS worked with NPS staff to develop a framework for the project, spent a day and a half touring and learning about the park, and discussed the natural resources and issues that will be included in the report. Cumberland Island is known for its extensive beaches and dunes, which support nesting loggerhead sea turtles and endangered shore bird species, as well as live oak maritime forests and salt marshes. Access to the island is by boat only and is limited to 300 visitors per day. Highlights of the visit were sightings of alligators, a manatee, and numerous waterbirds!

Components selected for the NRCA were four ecological communities (upland forests, freshwater wetlands, salt marshes, and interdune communities), mammals, birds, herpetofauna (with a focus on sea turtles), air and water quality, and barrier island geomorphology. The geomorphology component will address concerns about shoreline change, especially erosion on the back barrier side of the island, and dune migration/loss. The NRCA will not only summarize existing data and information for these resources, it will also identify research needs or "data gaps" that would help inform park management decisions in the future.

White Mountain Apache Tribe

GSS recently began Phase 1 of a two-phase wetland mapping and assessment project for the White Mountain Apache Tribe; land situated in a mountainous area east of the Tonto National Forest and northeast of Phoenix. GSS staff expect to identify and map a diversity of wetland types throughout the varied landscape. 

The first phase of the project focuses on initial wetland inventory. This includes remote detection and delineation of existing wetland features using high-resolution orthophotography and with other collateral spatial datasets, along with classification of wetland features using the FGDC Wetland Mapping Standards and an assignment of hydro-geomorphic metrics that relate to wetland function. Phase 2 will include field validation and the completion of a wetland functional assessment using the newly mapped and modern wetland data.