Wet Area Mapping (WAM) development at the University of New Brunswick
Researchers at the University of New Brunswick Faculty of Forestry and Environmental Management have earned an international reputation for developing new and innovative applications for the forest industry. One such innovation, the Wet-Areas Mapping (WAM) application is quickly becoming more than its intended use as a forest management tool.
Realizing an immediate need to intervene in the rapid expansion of human activities across near and remote landscapes, Dr. Paul Arp, a forestry professor specializing in forest soils at the University of New Brunswick (UNB) and coordinator of UNB’s Forest Watershed Research Centre, and his team took the lead role in the development and implementation of the WAM initiative. The team’s research on machine-soil and plant-soil interactions led to the modeling and mapping of hydrologically-sensitive areas across New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Maine, and other select areas across Canada and the United States at high resolution (10 m generally, and 1 m where possible).
Currently, about 100,000,000 ha have been mapped, with at least a third of that already used in daily operations planning by natural resource departments in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Alberta. Forest companies, notably J.D. Irving, and other forest companies in the Maritimes and in Maine, and Alpac, DMI, Weyerhaeuser, West-Fraser, and Millar Western in Alberta are also using the technology
The WAM modeling system, originally designed by Dr. Fan-Rui Meng and further developed by Jae Ogilvie for direct client-based operations applications, is a combination of technologies using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) processes and digital elevation models derived from stereographic image interpretations to light distance and ranging (LiDAR).
In Alberta, where the Government recently co-hosted a series of information sessions on WAM with the NSERC-sponsored Sustainable Forest Management Network (SFMN), those using the system were praising its benefits stating the system successfully “predicted previously unmapped wet areas and small, permanent and non-permanent streams. With LiDAR-derived WAMs, the accuracy is within 4 metres of handheld GPS locations 9 out of 10 times.”
Alberta has scheduled 17 million hectares of its green zone, stretching from the southwestern foothill to the northwest plains, to be mapped using LiDAR coverage, with one third already completed at UNB.
From a forest industry perspective, the benefits of the system are numerous, including improving efficiencies and minimizing intrusions into sensitive areas. In New Brunswick, J.D. Irving was instrumental in pioneering the industrial use of the new tool, taking full advantage of the ability of WAM to show where water is at, or near, the ground surface and where the soil and forest vegetation may be sensitive to flooding, water-logging, or mechanical disturbances.
This technology also facilitates the planning and construction of road routes through difficult terrain, resulting in a systematic reduction of road costs and vehicle down-time by avoiding wet areas and minimizing the need for stream channel crossings. Even block harvest operations and post-harvest actions are fine-tuned through on-board WAM-guided navigation.
Efforts at the University are currently underway to finalize a WAM-extension tool to improve road and trail placements systematically, to further integrate WAM with user priorities, and to expand WAM usage across Canada and elsewhere. As industry representatives have stated, “WAM as a key element towards surprise-free planning” means time and money saved.
Not surprisingly, the applications for WAM are being embraced by other agencies interested in knowing where water flows and remains near the soil surface across their jurisdictions. For example, Alberta Tourism, Parks and Recreation are now using WAM to plan campgrounds, hiking trails and park boundaries. In this regard, imagine the WAM advantage for park managers and their advisory groups when planning trails for off-highway vehicles.
In New Brunswick, WAM is required for all development applications, including linear projects, subdivision planning, and also assists in Clean Water Act regulations. It’s being used to chart potential distribution routes for invasive species.
The scientific community has welcomed WAM for habitat delineations and identifying wet areas that host a variety of rare species and species at risk. Additional research at the University is underway to explore the possibility of using WAM’s cartographic depth-to-water index to identify vegetation composition and select soil properties including soil type, drainage and mechanical resistance to rutting, all at high resolution.
It is leading-edge technology, like WAM, that is quickly becoming an important hallmark for the University of New Brunswick's Faculty of Forestry and Environmental Management. As such, WAM was recently recognized as an ASTech Honouree activity at the 2011 ASTech Gala event in Calgary, Alberta.
– Barb Scott
