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Analysis of Arkansas Wetland Planning Areas

 

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For over ten years, CAST has collaborated with Arkansas' Multi-Agency Wetland Planning Team (MAWPT) to identify, quantify, and analyze wetland resources across the state. The MAWPT has designated five Wetland Planning Regions (WPR) to reflect variations in climate, geology, topography, soils, and vegetation (see map at left). CAST and the MAWPT have worked on a series of projects to develop and apply a geographic information systems (GIS) based analysis to each of these five WPRs. Although the unique qualities of each region have required specific methodological adaptations to produce the best results, the overall analytical approach and data have been the same across the entire state, following the collaboratively developed "Standard GIS Methodology for Wetland Analysis"

The GIS portion of this work is comprised of three major steps:

  1. Gathering, development, and conversion of ecosystem component data.
  2. Creation of base component overlays and hardcopy maps.
  3. Application of GIS analysis.

 

The first step focuses on assembling data both for wetland delineation and for cartographic production. Most definitions of wetlands contain three components: (1) water, (2) unique soils different from upland areas, and (3) vegetation adapted to wet environments (“hydrophytic” vegetation). This project utilizes water data from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and from satellite imagery. The imagery was processed by CAST personnel to identify areas that are regularly inundated during flooding. Soils data for the study area were obtained from NRCS in the form of their digital county soils database, SSURGO. Finally, hydrophytic vegetation was extracted from the Arkansas GAP Analysis data. Additional data, such as roads, political boundaries, etc., were extracted from USGS and Bureau of the Census sources..Wetland inventory map

Once data has been gathered and converted to a uniform database, a series of GIS overlays and maps will be produced. These include a hydric soils map (indicative of wetlands), a wetlands inventory map, and a public ownership map. These provide researchers of the MAWPT with tools that can be used both for immediate planning purposes, and also for evaluating the latter GIS analysis stage of the project

The core of the project is the GIS analysis of the assembled data. CAST conducts analyses that identify priority wetland protection and restoration sites based on the characteristics, distribution and functions of existing wetlands in Arkansas. This process involves the identification of wetlands for protection, restoration or acquisition, and prioritization of areas that would benefit the most with limited state funds. The end products are both hardcopy paper maps, useful for overall planning or presentation, and the underlying GIS coverages, which allow more precise identification of locations, as well as the option of changing analysis criteria and re-calculating.