WORKING TOWARDS AN AUTOMATED WETLANDS … · working towards an automated wetlands mapping process:...

WORKING TOWARDS AN AUTOMATED WETLANDS MAPPING PROCESS:

SUCCESSES, FAILURES AND POTENTIAL FOR THE FUTURE

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Most of the work described in this presentation was funded by the MN Environmental and

Natural Resource Trust Fund and performed cooperatively with the MN DNR and U.S. FWS

WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT?

It took 35 years (1979 – 2014) and more than $220 million to complete the NWI

Tiner, R.W. (editor). 2009. Status Report for the National Wetlands Inventory Program: 2009. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Division of Habitat and Resource Conservation, Branch of Resource and Mapping Support, Arlington, VA. 48 pp.

WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT?

Using current technology and today’s dollars, it would take approximately $260 Million to re-map the wetlands*

*Based on the MN NWI update numbers

WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT?

Resources managers want more information not less…habitat type, food resources, water quality, wetland changes, etc.

WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT?

Can we take advantage of the abundance of data and new technology to provide resource information to decision makers?

I believe the answer is YES. However, we might have to think differently about how we use and analyze the data.

SEMI-AUTOMATED WETLANDS MAPPING

GOAL: To reduce the amount of time the photo interpreters spend on delineating wetland

boundaries so they can focus their efforts on identifying the wetland class, water regime and

modifiers

Water

Forested Wetlands

All Other Wetlands

SEMI-AUTOMATED WETLANDS MAPPING

DEM Slope TPI CTI Height Intensity

SEMI-AUTOMATED WETLANDS MAPPING

General Process: Open Water

SEMI-AUTOMATED WETLANDS MAPPING

General Process: Upland/Wetland Boundary

SEMI-AUTOMATED WETLANDS MAPPING

General Process: Forested Wetlands

SEMI-AUTOMATED WETLANDS MAPPING

General Process: All Emergent Wetlands

SEMI-AUTOMATED WETLANDS MAPPING

Potential Future Process: Summer Imagery

SEMI-AUTOMATED WETLANDS MAPPING

-

TIM

E

+

- # Wetlands +

Segmentation Photo Interpretation

Water

Upland/Wetland

Wetland Class

SEMI-AUTOMATED WETLANDS MAPPING

Additional Advantages: Increased Accuracy? Spend more time focusing on:

- Wetland ID

- Classification types

WHAT IS WORKING WELL

The Process

WHAT IS WORKING WELL

Starting to produce better results in wetland class

WHAT DO WE NEED TO WORK ON

Minor Clean-up processes

WHAT DO WE NEED TO WORK ON

Data consistency issues – always going to be a problem but try to limit it as much as possible.

WHAT DO WE NEED TO WORK ON

How do you deal with these segmentation issues?

WHAT DO WE NEED TO WORK ON

Sometimes there is still too many segments

POTENTIAL FOR THE FUTURE

What if we had full Lidar coverage and unlimited imagery?

Could we develop a wetlands basin layer from the Lidar and a wetlands class, water regime and modifiers from the imagery – could we automatically track changes?

POTENTIAL FOR THE FUTURE

USGS 3D Elevation Program and NGA NextView Imagery

POTENTIAL FOR THE FUTURE

12/23/2013

4/30/2014 1/4/2015

3/13/2015 6/13/2015 10/30/2015

POTENTIAL FOR THE FUTURE

4/30/2014 3/13/2015 6/13/2015 10/30/2015

POTENTIAL FOR THE FUTURE

1985 1998 2005

Original NWI

POTENTIAL FOR THE FUTURE

Changes to Original

NWI Wetlands

POTENTIAL FOR THE FUTURE

The future potential of Radar for Wetlands…

From White, L., Brisco, B., Daboor, M., Schmitt, A., Pratt, A. and Huberty, B. 2014. Synthetic Aperture Radar Methodologies for Monitoring Wetlands.

POTENTIAL FOR THE FUTURE

From White, L., Brisco, B., Daboor, M., Schmitt, A., Pratt, A. and Huberty, B. 2014. Synthetic Aperture Radar Methodologies for Monitoring Wetlands.

Surface Water Maps derived from

RADARSAT -2 imagery

POTENTIAL FOR THE FUTURE

Great Lakes Coastal Wetlands Mapping With Landsat TM and PALSAR

Bourgeau-Chavez, L., Endres, S., Battaglia, M., Miller, M.E., Banda, E., Laubach, Z., Higman, P., Chow-Fraser, P., Marcaccio, J. Development of a Bi-National Great Lakes Coastal Wetland and Land Use Map Using Three-Season PALSAR and Landsat Imagery. Remote Sens. 2015, 7, 8655-8682.

CONCLUSIONS

A more fully automated process for mapping wetlands is possible

An abundance of optical imagery is available to enhance the classification/update process

A lot of potential with Radar imagery in the future

FINAL THOUGHT

In this age of data abundance, can we create tools to efficiently transform the data into the information needed by our resource managers to protect and manage the places we love.

ROBB MACLEOD DUCKS UNLIMITED

734-623-2000 RMACLEOD@DUCKS.ORG