Wetland database : A tool for land use decisions

ABSTRACT

Land use decisions are made at the local level by lay boards and comminissions in the 169 Connecticut cities and towns. Board members need information that is easy to understand and is technically defensible as a planning tool. The Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) recognized that need and partnered with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) to develop a method to evaluate the functions and values of wetlands (Ammann, 1986) for use by people with limited scientific knowledge of wetlands. The results of this method provide the city/town with resource information of all wetlands in the project area, a comparative rating system for 14 values, functions and uses of the wetlands, maps ready for digitizing into a geographic information system (GIS), and graphs and tables. This method does not determine which wetland value, function, or use is most important to the community. The community determines importance values. The wetland database allows the towns to view wetlands as a system rather than looking at each wetland as an isolated unit