Finding Wetlands in the Arid West

In early April, at the beginning of the GSS fieldwork season, GSS staff members Andy Robertson, Zachary Ansell, and Josh Balsiger conducted pre-mapping fieldwork for a Bureau of Land Management Project in Southeast Nevada, just outside Las Vegas. The purpose of the trip was to identify conventions for the interpretation of wetland matrices in the study area. GSS staff spent 8 days in Nevada, covering 2,156 miles, and collected data at 111 different pre-selected and ad-hoc checksites.

The arid west has unique hydrology that is characterized by localized precipitation events that play a big role in the hydrogeomorphology of the region. Features that GSS was able to develop wetland mapping conventions for included mineral flats, mountain springs, USFWS refuges, and high mountain drainage divides. Soil samples provided an important look into the hydric nature of soils at varying check sites and were especially interesting in high altitude depressions where water ponds when ephemeral flow paths upstream experience precipitation events.

The trip brought the team from the basins of prehistoric lakes to groundwater expressing springs gushing out of mountain sides, along with an occasional disappearing stream. It served to distinguish unique image signatures, identify water regimes and helped inform an understanding of the wetlands present in the study area.