While government agencies at all levels have been charged with the management and protection of valuable wetland areas, most face a similar dilemma: accurately determining the location, amount, type, and particularly the ecological function of these wetland areas. This paper describes one approach to assessing a wetland's functional significance in the form of a GIS-based landscape analysis of wetland areas. This rule-based model, known as the North Carolina Coastal Region Evaluation of Wetland Significance (NCCREWS), rates each wetland on the basis of water quality, hydrology, and wildlife habitat and estimates potential risk to the watershed should that wetland be removed.