The National Wetlands Inventory's First Two Years on Internet

by

Herman Robinson, Computer Systems Analyst

National Wetlands Inventory US Fish and Wildlife Service

St. Petersburg, Florida 33702

Bill Wilen, Project Leader

National Wetlands Inventory

US Fish and Wildlife Service

Washington, D.C. 20240

OVERVIEW

The National Wetlands Inventory (NWI) of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service produces information on the characteristics, extent, and status of the Nation's wetlands and deepwater

habitats. This information is used by Federal, State, and local agencies, academic institutions, Congress, and the private sector to formulate resource management objectives and myriad other applications. The Emergency Wetland Resources Act of 1986 directs the Service to map the wetlands of the lower 48 states by 1998, and Alaska by 2000. The NWI has mapped 87% of the lower 48 states, and 30% of Alaska. The Act also requires the Service to produce a digital wetlands database for the United States by 2004. About 33% of the lower 48 states and 11% of Alaska are digitized. Congressional mandates require the NWI to produce status and trends reports to Congress at ten-year intervals. In 1982, the NWI produced the first comprehensive and statistically valid estimate of the status of the Nation's wetlands and wetland losses, and in 1990 produced the first update. In addition to the status and trends reports, the NWI has produced over 130 publications, including manuals, plant and hydric soils lists, field guides, posters, wall size resource maps, atlases, and state reports, and has had numerous articles published in professional journals.

BUILDING THE DATABASE

The NWI National Center in St. Petersburg, Florida, includes a state-of-the-art computer operation which is responsible for maintaining the wetlands layer of the National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI). The NWI maps are digitized by contractors and other Federal, State and University mapping organizations. Once the data pass quality control reviews, they are integrated into the wetlands layer of NSDI. All digital files are constructed with 100% user-pays funding from cooperating agencies or contributed by other organizations that digitize the existing NWI maps. Cooperating and contributing agencies included 48 Federal, Native American Tribes, State, county agencies, and private sector organizations such as Ducks Unlimited. Statewide databases have been built for 8 States and initiated in 5 other States. Digitized wetland data are available for portions of all 50 States (Figure 1). Once digital data is added to the database, users can download the data at no cost over the Internet, or purchase the data through the U.S. Geological Survey for the cost of reproduction. NWI maintains a MAPS database of metadata containing production information, history, and availability of all maps and digital wetlands data produced by NWI. This database us available over the Internet. The six U.S. Geological Survey Earth Science Information Centers (ESIC) regional offices have on-line access to the database; a subset of the database is available on disk for use on personal computers.

The Emergency Wetlands Resource Act requires the NWI archive and disseminate wetlands maps and digitized data as it becomes available. The process prescribed by Office of Management and Budget (OMB) circular A-16, "Coordination of Surveying, Mapping, and Related Spacial Data", provides an avenue for increased NWI coordination activities with other Federal agencies to reduce waste in government programs. As chair of the Federal Geographic Data Committee's Wetlands Subcommittee, the NWI Project Leader is responsible for promoting the development, sharing, and dissemination of wetlands related spacial data. NWI continues to coordinate mapping activities under 36 cooperative agreements or memoranda of understanding.

Hard copy NWI maps are being archived for perpetuity by the National Archives. NWI maps and digital data are distributed widely throughout the country and the world. The NWI has distributed over 1.7 million maps nationally since they were first introduced. Map distribution is accomplished through 34 state-run distribution centers covering 47 States; the U.S. Geological Survey centers at 1-800-USA-MAPS: the Library of Congress and the Federal Depository Library System; and most recently the NWI Home Page on the Internet. The URL address for the Home Page is: http://www.nwi.fws.gov. Currently, over 20,000 digital maps are available at no charge over the Internet.

DISSEMINATING DIGITAL WETLAND DATA

Over a period of 13 years before Internet, NWI sold 37,996 digital wetland data files through USGS's 1-800-USA-MAPS. These maps were and are sold through a tired pricing plan. The average cost per map file was $9.20. The data is still being offered. NWI met the April 1995 deadline of providing public access to geospatial data sets in President Clinton's Executive Order 12906 (Coordinating Geographic Data Acquisition and Access: The National Spatial Data Infrastructure). Anyone with access to a GIS system and the Internet can download the data. During the first two years 163,570 digital wetland map files were downloaded. At the average cost of $9.20 per map file, users have saved over $1.5 million dollars but in reality it expanded use of the data.

Paper Maps vs. Digital Files

Although the total number of hard copy paper maps distributed far exceed the number of vector data files distributed, the shift from paper copies of maps to the vector data files of the wetlands is well under way. (Figure 2) illustrates the shift that has occurred between 1991 to 1996. This slide does not include the Paper copies of the maps that are distributed by the 34 State run centers covering 48 states, or the maps that are used in microfiche formate in the 600 map depository libraries. On the digital side this graph does not include the date provided through what we call the "Everything Tape." For those people who can utilize a 5 Gigabyte 8mm UNIX tar tape, NWI sells what we call the Everything Tape for $155.00. It contains all the data in the database on the day the tape is cut, and is sold through the USGS Earth Science Information Centers.

Users

Maps are used by all levels of government, academia, Congress, private consultants, land developers, and conservation organizations. Users by domain are displayed in (Figure 3). The unresolved users are people who did not provide a valid e-mail return address. The biggest user is the government. (Figure 4) provides an additional breakdown on government users. The single biggest individual government user is the Lawrence Livermore Lab. Other big users are EPA and the U.S. Geological Survey. The users do not stop at our international boundaries. Wetland files were downloaded by users in 43 countries from Argentina to the Ukraine. (Figure 5) shows the biggest international users were Canada, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom.

Uses

The uses are even more varied than the users. They include planning for watershed and drinking water supply protection; sitting a transportation corridors; construction of solid waste facilities; and sitting of schools and other municipal buildings. Resource managers are provided with maps which are essential for effective habitat management and acquisition of important wetland areas needed to perpetuate migratory bird populations as called for in the North American Waterfowl and Wetlands Management Plan; for fisheries restoration; floodplain planning; and endangered species recovery plans. Agencies such as the Department of Agriculture use the maps as a major tool in the identification of wetlands for the administration of the Swampbuster provisions of the 1985,1990 and 1995 Farm Bills. Regulatory agencies use the maps to help in advanced wetland identification procedures, and to determine wetland values and mitigation requirements. Private sector planners use the maps to determine location and nature of wetlands to aid in framing alterative plans to meet regulatory requirements. The maps are instrumental in preventing problems from developing and in providing facts that allow sound business decisions to be made quickly, accurately, and efficiently. Good planning protects the habitat value of wetlands for wildlife, preserve water quality, provides flood protection, and enhances ground water recharge, among many other wetland values.

NWI's Homepage

The NWI's World Wide Web site provides access to much more than wetland map files.

NWI Homepage also includes the following sections:

• the "metadata" section containing the NWI metadata file in ASCII and Word Perfect formats;

• the "samples" area contains 14 sample quads in DLG, DXF, MOSS, GRASS, ARC and NSDI formats along with acreage summaries for each quad;
  
  
• the "ecology" section provides national and regional plant lists that occur in wetlands;
  
  
• The "software" area contains AMLs and SMLs for converting NWI DLG files to ArcInfo, unzipping software, parsing software and a public domain version of TAR for MS-DOS;
  
  
• the "dlgdata" area contains DLG data, specifically NWI 7.5' quad maps that have been converted to DLG format;
  
  
• the "maps" section contains status and ordering information about NWI products and an explanation of NWI map codes and new additions to online dlgdata work areas in progress for digital wetlands data;
  
  
• the "data" section contains several FTP directories that contain products geared toward specific users;
  
  
• the "ESIC" area provides updated information on the status of NWI products for Earth Science Information Center/U.S. Geological Survey researchers;
  
  
• the "Educators" section, which provides information and links to educational wetland resources that may be ;
  useful to educators.
  
• the "General Information" section, which provides general NWI information;
  
  
• the "Read Me" section, which provides descriptions of products offered by NWI;
  
  
• the "More!" section which provides links to other wetlands and NWI sites; and
  
  
• the "GIS Think Tank" section, an NWI-developed online forum where problems, questions, comments, and suggestions associated with the digital mapping efforts of NWI data end users are addressed.
  
  

But as evident in (Figure 6), the users are after data.

Wetland Files Downloaded

The first two years saw 163,570 wetland files downloaded. The most download in one day was 1996 files, but the average was 224. The only day during the first year that maps were not downloaded was Thanksgiving day. This was not the case the second year (Figure 7). During the furlough of the Federal government in 1996, nearly 1,000 maps a day were downloaded. In the past NWI maps were disseminated every business day. Now digital wetland map data files go out almost every day of the year. Figure 8 shows transfer by hour of the day. (Figure 9) shows transfer by day of the week. Most people download 1 to 5 files per visit (Figure 10) but 48 users downloaded more than 500 files during one visit. The digital wetland data are served in DLG format. NWI sample files in other formats, (Figure 11) are also served. Our goal was to see what the interest was in other formats. ARC sample files are the most downloaded followed by DXF. Users of autocad systems need data in DXF format. The small amount of NSDI sample data downloaded seem to indicate that it has not yet caught. The small amount of metadata transferred (Figure 12) was also a surprise. It appears that after people take a look at your metadata and understand what you are serving they don't bother use the other information. (Figure 13) provides data on other map related files that were transferred. Software is also provided on NWI's Homepage to assist users. AMLs and SMLs for converting NWI DLG files to ArcInfo, unzipping software, parsing software and a public domain version of TAR for MS-DOS are all provided. (Figure 14) indicates which types of software are the most popular.

Additional sources of data are maintained by the NWI to complement the information available from the maps themselves. The Service maintains a National List of Plant Species that Occur in Wetlands. This list has been incorporated into the Federal Manual for Identifying and Delineating Jurisdictional Wetlands, and in to the Natural Resources Conservation Service's procedures to identify wetlands for the Swampbuster provision of the Farm Bill. The National List and Regional Lists are available over the Internet through the NWI Homepage.

CONCLUSION

Serving data over Internet represents a major milestone for the NWI Project. It has provided an optional means for making digital wetlands maps and related data available to users around the world.