Comparisons of Digital Terrain Data for Wetland Inventory on Two Alaskan Army Bases
Abstract
The nation's military installations encompass undeveloped lands that have become increasingly important as wildlife habitats. Resource managers of the installations need wetland inventories to improve stewardship of these lands. Digital geographic data are readily available to land managers. The use of these data to inventory wetlands has not been demonstrated. As part of a project to integrate wetlands into the ITAM (Integrated Training Area Management) program for managing Army lands, wetland inventory methods using existing digital geographic information for two terrains on Army installations in Alaska were explored: (I) glacial moraine depressions and estuarine marsh on Fort Richardson, and (2) discontinu- ous permafrost and taiga forest on Fort Wainwright's Yukon Command training site. Our results show that (1) existing geographic data used to infer wetland locations (Landsat Thematic Mapper TM. National Wetland Inventory NWI maps. and hygric soil maps) only partly agree. and (2) optimum Landsat TM band combinations for wetland inventory vary on a site-specific basis. Landsat TM classifications (unsupervised) of Fort Richardson wetlands compared reasonably well (0.73 Kappa Index of Agreement KIA) with the NWI map as long as the band combinations included at least one visible and the near-infrared wavelength band (e.g.. bands 3, 4, and 5 or bands 2, 3, and 4). The Fort Richardson hygric soils map indicates more extensive wetlands than indicated by the NWI (0.64 KIA). The Landsat TM classification could be made to agree fairly.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Nov 01, 1999
- Accession Number
- ADA375317
Entities
People
- Charles C. Racine
- Nancy H. Greeley
- Patricia B. Weyrick
- Rae A. Melloh
- Stevenw. Sprecher
Organizations
- Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory