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Generating Nested Wetland Catchments with Readily-Available Digital Elevation Data May Improve Evaluations of Land-Use Change on Wetlands

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Abstract

The important ecosystem functions wetlands perform are influenced by land-use changes in their surrounding uplands and thus, identifying the upland area that flows into a wetland is important. We provide a method to define wetland catchments as the portion of the landscape that flows into a wetland; we allowed catchments to be nested and include other wetlands and their catchments, forming a hydrologic wetland complex. We generated catchments using multiple sources and resolutions of digital elevation data to evaluate whether catchment sizes generated from those data were similar. While non-contributing areas, or sinks, differed between elevation data sets, catchment areas were similar among high-resolution LiDAR- and IfSAR-derived data and readily available lower resolution data from the National Elevation Dataset. Accordingly, the higher-resolution DEM data, which may be expensive or not available, will not likely yield more accurate wetland catchment boundaries in flat or glaciated landscapes. We contend that this method to generate wetland catchments can be used to improve wetland studies where the location of a wetland within a catchment is important. Furthermore, the size of the catchment is important for understanding how wetlands respond to climate, land-use practices, and contamination.

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Acknowledgments

This research was funded by the Plains and Prairie Potholes Landscape Conservation Cooperative and USGS Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center. We would like to thank Alex Lawton and Peter Mockus for GIS data assistance. Support and advice was provided by Erik Scherff, Wes Newton, Terry Shaffer, Jane Austin, Mark Sherfy, Mark Wiltermuth, and Josh Stafford. The International Water Institute provided LiDAR data and advice on methods. David Ward and Keith Metzger provided assistance in acquiring the IfSAR data. We thank David Jenkins and anonymous reviewers for their comments and improvements to this manuscript. Any use of trade, firm, or product names is for descriptive purposes only and does not imply endorsement by the U.S. Government.

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  1. Lisa A. McCauley

    Present address: Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology, University of Wisconsin – Madison, A105 Russell Labs, 1630 Linden Dr., Madison, WI, 53706-1598, USA

Authors and Affiliations

  1. South Dakota State University, U.S. Geological Survey, Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center, Jamestown, ND, 58401, USA

    Lisa A. McCauley

  2. U.S Geological Survey, Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center, Jamestown, ND, 58401, USA

    Michael J. Anteau

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  1. Lisa A. McCauley
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Correspondence to Lisa A. McCauley.

Electronic supplementary material

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Online Resource 1

Flow chart from Model Builder for the non-contributing areas analysis (PDF 899 kb)

Online Resource 2

Python script for the non-contributing areas analysis (PDF 96 kb)

Online Resource 3

Flow chart from Model Builder for the catchment delineation analysis (PDF 146 kb)

Online Resource 4

Python script for the catchment delineation procedure (PDF 14 kb)

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McCauley, L.A., Anteau, M.J. Generating Nested Wetland Catchments with Readily-Available Digital Elevation Data May Improve Evaluations of Land-Use Change on Wetlands. Wetlands 34, 1123–1132 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13157-014-0571-9

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