Our frontyard wetlands in StoryMaps
For several years I’ve been wanting to dive into ArcGIS StoryMaps, cartography for one and all. This spring, StoryMaps came to us, at Discovery and Southeast Alaska Land Trust, (SEALT) in the form of a team from the US Fish and Wildlife Service. The Service has selected Taashuyee, river-&-tideflats (Mword Refuge &surroundings) as one of 5 focal wetlands nationally for American Wetlands Month, May, 2021. I got to look over their shoulders as they assembled a StoryMap for this 6-square-mile estuary and uplift parkland complex.
In addition to USFWS, other federal, state and NGO partners, regionally and nationally, will be celebrating wetlands this May. View the StoryMap here within JuneauNature, or check it out, along with the other cool wetland StoryMaps and regional profiles on the USFWS page for American Wetlands Month.
May is a wondrous time to live in Áak’w Aaní, and especially to revel in the greening marsh, pungent muck and avian cacophony of Taashuyee. At Discovery, we’re excited to help Fish & Wildlife bring national attention to this globally unique rebounding estuary, and—who knows—maybe even inspire some locals who haven’t fully recognized the extraordinary privilege of living and working on the perimeters of this ubiquitous roadside jewel.
Many of the maps and resources in USFWS’s StoryMap were originally created by Discovery on contract for the local FWS office, SEALT, several CBJ divisions, and airport EIS contractors, with partners like Bob Armstrong and Mary Willson. But some were inspired by ideas from F&W’s StoryMap team. For example, it hadn’t occurred to us that, from the 2013 LiDAR elevation model, one could accurately estimate how much land will be removed from tidal exposure in coming years. After checking in with SEALT and the US Corps of Engineers, Cathy Pohl generated this one-foot wide belt at the estuary’s upper fringes. In 24 years, lands coded red will all be supratidal.
About 190 acres in red will be uplifted above Extreme High Water in the coming quarter century. Assuming 0.5 inches rebound per year, that works out to about 8 acres per year.
See you on the marsh! (that is, if I’m not geeking out in ArcMap, learning how to make my own StoryMaps . . .🙂
