Great Lakes Remote Sensing

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This collaborative project is specifically directed towards temporal mapping of Great Lakes Coastal Wetlands with new, integrated remote sensing technologies. This funding opportunity is the first step to build a comprehensive, collaborative and integrated remote sensing program for the Great Lakes System. A binational approach will be developed to map wetlands, wetland change and associated features for the Great Lakes Coastal System. Wetlands are continually changing from climate and human actions. The Great Lakes Coastal Wetlands are part of the largest surface freshwater reserve on the planet which makes then unique and valuable both from and an environmental and functional aspect. Past wetland mapping programs on both sides of the border used traditional 2-D cartographic representations at various scales, formats and classifications where they have become outdated over time. This project is the first step at moving to a new stage where time and elevation is included to provide a 4-D representation of Great Lakes coastal wetlands using multi-temporal sub-meter optical and radar satellite imagery. This is a notice of intent to award single source cooperative agreements to the University of Minnesota and Michigan Tech University under justification 505DM 2.14.B (1, 2 and 4). The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Service) will be substantially involved in this project under this funding opportunity. In particular, the Service will be responsible for providing the federal nexus for access to commercial satellite imagery through the NextView and related remote sensing data programs. The Service will oversee this collaborative project providing communication and management direction through the Service's Midwest Region, Ecological Services Program. Competition for the award is not practical as the eligible applicants have the necessary experience and resources to accomplish this project which includes peta-scale datasets and computing to derive the end products. This is a collaborative project to fuse the past strengths and accomplishments of the applicants into a derived goal of multi-temporal wetland and wetland change mapping.

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