Top-down landscape-based approach toward the assess and rank watershed and wetlands impacted by transportation corridor

Effectively integrating geospatial data to help with government decision making is a key challenge in transportation planning. Partitioning the landscape into hydrological watersheds is a logical and an ecologically-focused way to explore the context interactions between natural and man-made features. The methodology employs concepts of geographic object-based approaches customized in a multi-scale landscape analysis. This study demonstrates the application of a top-down GIS-based landscape analysis that considers the analytical hierarchy decision making process, improved radar-based mapping of forested wetlands, long-term plan, 12-digit boundaries of hydrologic unit code and the designed Interstate-269 in a watershed-focused landscape analysis. The study is part of a larger project investigating the application of remote sensing and geospatial analysis to streamlining the environmental planning process for transportation corridor projects. The results indicated that understanding of landscape context and position can deliver knowledge of early impacts on the environment and ecosystems that extend beyond traditional approaches which quantify the number of stream crossings and the areas of wetlands impacted. The study showed that values can be assigned to various landscape features and that these values may be considered in the context of spatially enabled MCDM-AHP.