Ducks unlimited's (DU) purpose in this project is to assist the U.S. Fish and wildlife service (FWS) in conducting mapping and data improvements for the national wetlands inventory (NWI) in a…

Ducks unlimited's (DU) purpose in this project is to assist the U.S. Fish and wildlife service (FWS) in conducting mapping and data improvements for the national wetlands inventory (NWI) in a collection of watersheds in northern and western upstate new york encompassing nearly two million acres. New data will be collected from the most current ortho imagery and ancillary datasets of the project areas, and wetlands within the project boundary will be delineated, classified, and digitized by DU personnel. During and after this process, quality assurance and control will be conducted through remote sensing techniques, verification in the field, and oversight of experienced analysts. Once data has been classified and mapped for the entire project area in accordance with these standards, IT will be reviewed by the FWS and NWI national quality assurance coordinator.throughout the project, DU will collaborate with the FWS to ensure the data is created in compliance with the official FWS wetland classification system, the federal geographic data committee standard for wetland classification (adopted on july 29, 1996: 61 federal register 39465), and the FWS's data collection requirements and procedures for mapping wetland, deepwater, and related habitats of the united states (august 2015). The project's final product will be standard-compliant digital NWI version 2 data for the project area. Before IT is integrated into the NWI IT will pass the wetlands data verification toolset developed by the FWS and will comply with all FWS data quality guidelines. IT will also include publication quality project metadata for posting on the wetlands mapper web application. Once review and quality assurance are complete, the data will be delivered to the FWS in the standard file geodatabase format and data schema. In being added to the NWI, IT will be integrated into the national spatial data infrastructure, defined by the geospatial data act of 2018 as "the technology, policies, criteria, standards, and employees necessary to promote geospatial data sharing throughout the federal, state, tribal, and local governments, and the private sector (including nonprofit organizations and institutions of higher education)". The data will provide accessible information to aid biologists and other professionals in conservation efforts.