Getting my feet wet: An internship mapping wetlands with the Adirondack Park Agency

Abstract

The Adirondack Park Agency (APA) is a state agency in New York that was established in 1971 with the goal of protecting private and public resources within the Adirondack Park. Over the summer I had the opportunity to work with the APA as their Wetland Mapping Intern in the Resource Analysis and Scientific Services (RASS) division. One of the responsibilities of RASS is to oversee wetland regulations under the New York State Freshwater Wetlands Act and the APA Act. For part of this internship, I accompanied RASS biologists on wetland site visits where I learned more about wetland delineations and the permitting process. After seeing the high demand for wetland site visits, I used the site visit data from the 2024 field season to highlight areas within the Adirondacks with higher wetland site visit frequencies. To accomplish this, I created a graduated symbol map to show the town-specific distribution of site visits. North Elba, Long Lake, and Chester were the towns with the highest frequency of wetland site visits. The resulting map could be used by the APA in an annual report. The second part of my internship was an independent project mapping deep-water marshes in six Adirondack lakes. Deep-water marshes consist primarily of submergent and floating aquatic vegetation that covers at least 100% of an 18.6 m² (200 ft²) area and is within a maximum water depth of 2 m (6.6 ft). GPS points along the boundary of each deep-water marsh were collected and used to create maps in ArcGIS Pro. I found that Lake Flower had the highest percent cover of deep-water marshes and that most of these marshes were less than an acre in size. This project helped expand the APA’s wetland database, which is a useful tool in the permitting process.