WASHINGTON - According to the Environmental Protection Agency, United States has lost more than half of its wetlands since the 1600s, and approximately 35 percent of the world’s wetlands were lost between 1970 and 2015. To protect against further impairment of wetlands and the essential functions they provide, the U.S. established a policy of "no net loss" of wetlands, as well as procedures to ensure responsible management of wetland resources.
As a result, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) requires the completion of a wetland delineation for essentially all construction activities that occur in the nation’s wetlands to establish the location and extent of those wetlands to comply with federal, state and local regulations. There are approximately 74,000 USACE regulatory actions each year related to wetland and aquatic resource permitting.
To simplify and expedite this process for the public, scientists with the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC) collaborated with regulatory staff of the USACE Detroit District (LRE) to develop Automated Wetland Determination Data Sheets (ADS), which were released for public use in April 2022.
“The ADS are a practical, readily applied technology that streamlines and improves the accuracy of the permitting process by automatically calculating many of the field indicators of wetland vegetation, hydrology and soils based upon user inputs,” said Dr. Jacob Berkowitz, a research soil scientist with ERDC’s Environmental Laboratory. “We’ve received very positive feedback from the private sector and agency staff who are now using the ADS to conduct wetland delineations across the nation.”
ADS were developed through a collaborative effort between Berkowitz and LRE Biologist Nathan Schulz.
“Nathan developed much of the framework and code underlying the ADS, while ERDC did a lot of the early technical work on the data sheets,” Berkowitz said. “Once the template was set, Nathan did most of the execution, and ERDC did a lot of the beta testing to ensure technical accuracy and to demonstrate the value of the ADS.
“The collaboration between ERDC and LRE, coupled with public engagement and technology transfer, highlights the capacity of the agency to develop and transition practical, impactful tools for the nation.”
Schulz said the collaboration between ERDC and LRE moved ADS from a local project to one that will benefit the entire country.
“I had originally developed the ADS just for my district and only for one of the Regional Supplements, the North Central and Northeast,” Schulz said. “I had met with Jacob and shown him what I had done, and that began our project to expand it out to the entire country. His knowledge of the Regional Supplements is vast, so I was constantly bombarding him with questions. We both had some great ideas to make the ADS more functional.”
Wetlands are a highly productive, biodiverse natural resource that occur where terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems meet. They provide an array of ecological functions that benefit society, such as reducing flood and storm surge damage, supporting fisheries and wildlife, improving water quality, reducing sedimentation, enhancing recreational opportunities, and providing economic and cultural value.
Since the 1980s, USACE scientists have conducted fundamental research in wetland ecology and developed tools and approaches to identify where wetlands occur on the landscape. In collaboration with other organizations, this work helps protect, enhance and restore wetland resources across the nation.
The USACE Regulatory Program is committed to protecting aquatic resources and navigation capacity, while allowing reasonable development through fair and balanced decisions. USACE evaluates permit applications for essentially all construction activities that occur in the nation's waters, including wetlands.
Additionally, wetland delineations are required any time activities associated with USACE projects have the potential to negatively impact wetland resources. As a result, wetland delineations can influence USACE decisions across the enterprise, including planning, environmental, operations, navigation and real estate considerations.
In the past, wetland delineation data was documented using paper forms. Environmental consultants, public sector practitioners and agency staff would collect field data documenting the predominance of wetland vegetation, hydric (wetland) soils and signs of hydrology before conducting calculations and analysis prior to submitting permit applications to USACE. Then USACE staff would review the forms for technical accuracy and omissions, which often required requests for corrections or additional data and frequently slowed the permitting process.
The next steps for the ADS include adding additional functionality and links with geospatial tools to further improve accuracy and efficiency. The team is also working to transition ADS for use on mobile devices, a process that is being beta tested by USACE Regulatory staff in the field.
Automated Data Sheets and a User Guide are available at: https://www.usace.army.mil/Missions/Civil-Works/Regulatory-Program-and-Permits/reg_supp/ under the General Information tab.