A landscape approach to characterizing wetland communities and their functions, Beluga Region, Alaska

Understanding pre-disturbance conditions is important to developing a successful restoration plan for proposed development activities. To aid in the reclamation of a proposed coal mine, the vegetation communities in the Beluga Region of Southcentral Alaska were characterized. Additionally, we determined the wetland status and functional capacity for each community type. There is currently no functional assessment method that applies to the local wetland types in the Beluga Region. We developed a GIS approach for evaluating wetland functions which can be used at a landscape scale to provide more objective results than traditional methods, which rely on subjective field data collected at one wetland characterization point in the wetland. Utilizing GIS also provides a simple, straight-forward approach that can be replicated after mine reclamation to evaluate if wetland functions have been replaced. Several datasets were used to attribute six wetland functions. Fourteen wetland community types were mapped. The most important functions performed by wetlands in the Beluga Region include carbon export and food chain support, streamflow moderation, and groundwater discharge.