Wetlands support an incredibly rich variety of biodiversity and serve as vital habitat for migratory birds, and they also provide beneficial ecosystem services for humans, including groundwater recharge, water filtration, and flood reduction. Despite these important functions, wetlands were summarily drained and used for agriculture and real estate development in the 19th and much of the 20th centuries, but today their value is better understood by scientists and resource managers. With the National Wetlands Inventory, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service provides extensive geospatial data on the current extent and location of the country's wetlands. Here, readers may enjoy exploring the Wetlands Mapper, a robust and regularly updated interactive web tool designed to work on both desktop and mobile devices, and they can also download a KML file to view wetlands using Google Earth. Visitors interested in conducting geospatial analysis can also download wetlands data by watershed or state, and reports on wetlands status and trends are available at the national and state level. Other topics covered here include data on riparian habitats (i.e. those at the land-water interface), historic wetlands data, and links to wetlands-related information at other federal agencies.
Comments