Aerial Photographs of Wetlands on National Wildlife Refuges in the Intermountain West

Abstract
Acknowledgements
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Abstract:

In the Northern Rocky Mountains, numerous wetland vegetation management challenges are apparent. The response of wetland vegetation to the short growing season coupled with a complex surface and subsurface hydrology is poorly understood. Challenges in northern montane wetlands are often related to the establishment and maintenance of desired plant distribution and structure. Maintaining wetland processes in these man-modified systems requires additional understanding of dynamics within and among years in relation to historic wetland management strategies. One subjective way of monitoring change is through 35 mm slide photography. To assist researchers and managers better understand vegetative changes in wetlands at Benton Lake National Wildlife Refuge (NWR), Grays Lake NWR, and Red Rock Lakes NWR, aerial slides from various sources have been digitized and made accessible ( http://swan.msu.montana.edu/nwr-slides/ ).

This is a collaborative project between the Biological Resources Division of the USDI-Geological Survey and the Environmental Statistics Group of the Biology Department at Montana State University. The work is in direct support of the FWS/BRD MOU on technical assistance and decision support, the BRD research project, "The development of a decision support system for trumpeter swan management", and the proposed integrated science project on modelling montane wetlands.

Slides from Benton Lake NWR are vertical slides supplied by the USDA. Other slides are low-level obliques.
 

Metadata for this project.
 

Slides of National Wildlife Refuges:

  1. Benton Lake National Wildlife Refuge
  2. Grays Lake National Wildlife Refuge
  3. Red Rock Lakes National Wildlife Refuge

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Acknowledgments:

Karl Wurster performed the image processing, entered the data and created the metadata file. Dan Gustafson programmed the mass production of the html pages.

Return to Adaptive Management, Advanced Technologies, and Montane Wetlands.


USGS - Science for a changing world
USDI - Geological Survey
Biological Resources Division
Northern Rocky Mountain Science Center
Maintainer: Rick Sojda (sojda@swan.msu.montana.edu)