Browsing by Subject "Wetland mitigation"

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    A Land Management Plan for the Galveston Bay Foundation's Texas City Property
    (2008-04-25T18:35:55Z) Ward, Amanda
    As a land trust, the Galveston Bay Foundation holds conservation easements and also owns several thousand acres of coastal land in the four county region surrounding the Galveston Bay in Texas. The foundation accepted a conservation easement as well as full ownership of this 132.2 acre (53.5HA) wetland mitigation property in 2005. This management plan will serve to educate staff and board members on the history of this property and potential issues of interest for the management of this land. The property has a coastal prairie upland with 42.6 acres (17.24 HA) of created wetlands. The wetlands were created as required by a United States Army Corps of Engineers permit for a project that destroyed wetlands on another site. Over the past three years the site has become re-vegetated with an assortment of wetland plant species and the created wetlands maintain natural water conditions as planned. The property was placed under a conservation easement to ensure that it would be preserved in as natural a condition as possible forever; however, as the foundation owns the land and was the recipient of the conservation easement it appears that the easement may not be valid. Therefore, either a new easement should be signed with another land trust, or the land should be sold to a conservation buyer with the Galveston Bay Foundation holding the easement. Chinese Tallow (Sapium sebiferum), a prevalent invasive species in the region, will need to be managed and other invasive species invasions should be prevented. There are public use structures on the western tract of the property which imply that the public may visit the site which will require clear public use policies. Fencing may be considered on the eastern portion of the property to prevent trespassing and additional signage should be placed to advertise GBF’s ownership of the land.
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    An Evaluation of GIS Prioritizations for Selecting Wetland Mitigation Sites: Cook Inlet Case Study
    (2011-04-25) Leduc, Elise
    Recent scientific research has demonstrated the multitude of ecosystem services and functions provided by wetlands. Despite the astronomical cost that would be required to replace these vital services with manmade mechanisms, humans have a long history of filling and destroying wetlands for development. Recent decades have seen wetland protection improve under the aegis of Section 404 of the Clean Water Act (CWA). The CWA requires compensatory mitigation for wetlands destroyed during development, but specific mitigation requirements remain vague and many projects continue to fail. Developing better wetland mitigation site selection would provide improvements to mitigation without requiring a CWA amendment. Sites have traditionally been chosen based on geographic or monetary convenience. This study explores an increasingly popular method of selection: GIS prioritizations. GIS prioritizations can increase the efficiency, repeatability, and transparency of site selection. This project analyzes a case study in Cook Inlet, Alaska utilizing a GIS prioritization to locate high quality mitigation lands to compensate for a bridge proposed by the Knik Arm Bridge and Toll Authority. Mitigation is required because the construction will destroy 390 acres of wetlands. To determine the most appropriate mitigation locations, 3047 nearby parcels were evaluated using 8 selection criteria. The results ranked all parcels and identified the most suitable sites to compensate for the proposed effects of the bridge. This study also compares the effectiveness of GIS prioritizations to other selection methods. GIS prioritizations were determined to be the most efficient technique for analyzing and ranking thousands of parcels. Initiating mitigation planning with a GIS prioritization can effectively direct fieldwork to just a subset of potentially high value wetlands. Hopefully better site selection with GIS prioritizations can improve overall wetland mitigation. Such improvements would not only fulfill the mitigation requirements under the CWA, but also effectively preserve remaining wetlands for future generations.