Selawik National Wildlife Refuge, Alaska

GSS staff (Andy Robertson and John Anderson) and the NWI Region 7 Coordinator (Julie Michaelson) spent nine days doing pre-mapping fieldwork for the Selawik National Wildlife Refuge in northwestern Alaska. The crew traveled the approximately 2.15 million acre project area by helicopter to verify satellite images of wetlands in the coastal plain, tundra, and mountainous areas. Over 200 different wetland sites were visited making it a priority to document the present plant species, and how water is moving and sitting in the wetlands landscape. This documentation is then used to develop a guidance to later remotely delineate and classify these wetland features.