Wetland Team

USC Wetland Team

Our Wetland Team delivers wetland conservation on a watershed scale. Many people recognize wetlands provide nutrient and runoff retention as well as habitat, but their benefits are often overlooked across the watershed. For that reason our team is dedicated to increasing wetland restoration and expanding wetland education and understanding across our region. We support many wetland-related programs, providing site review, monitoring, design, construction and maintenance to partners, members and other USC teams alike.

Targeted 2026 Projects

Continue assisting USC Members and staff with navigating DEC’s updated wetland regulations including assisting with initial reviews of project areas to advise on JD review necessity.
Expand targeted wetland outreach
Construct USC Water Quality Program wetland restoration projects
Seek grant funds to increase restoration
Host full and mini wetland delineation trainings to expand wetland knowledge of partner and member staff in the watershed.

USC Wetland Team Data

As we increase our efforts to identify potential wetland restoration sites across the watershed, we plan to develop resources to better assist our partners in finding those sites. Below are some GIS datalayers for use by our partners in reviewing potential work areas.

The following are raster files for each New York USC County. These files are general locations of suitable soils and slopes using coarse data available on a region-wide scale.

Allegany County	Livingston County	Schuyler County
Broome County	Madison County	Steuben County
Chemung County	Oneida County	Tioga County
Chenango County	Onondaga County	Tompkins County
Cortland County	Ontario County	Yates County
Delaware County	Otsego County
Herkimer County	Schoharie County

Watershed-wide data layers

USC Watershed Member County: Soil Drainage Class Layer

USC Watershed Member County: Digital Elevation Model (DEM) Layer

Other wetland datalayers available online

NWI Wetland Data can be downloaded here: https://www.fws.gov/wetlands/data/data-download.html
NWI Wetland Data available in Google Earth
Soils data available: https://websoilsurvey.sc.egov.usda.gov/App/HomePage.htm
DEC Regulated Wetland Data can be downloaded here: https://cugir.library.cornell.edu/catalog/cugir-008187?id=111

Online Mappers – useful in evaluating potential wetland restoration sites

USDA Web Soil Survey – IMS of digital soil survey data with aerial photos or USGS Topo maps as the background image.
USDA Plants Database – excellent resource for identifying wetland plants and plant indicator status.
Google Maps – google maps regularly updates their aerial photos, often having recent photos for areas across the watershed.
Google Earth – google maps in addition to having updated aerial photos, has the option of toggling through historic aerial photos, as useful tool in site review.

New York Specific Links

NYS OPRHP SHPO IMS – a lot of acronyms for an online mapper that shows the NYS Archaeologically Sensitive Areas.
NYS DEC Environmental Resource Mapper – IMS of the State Regulated wetlands and adjacent “Wetland Checkzone.”
New York iMapInvasives – New York State’s on-line, all-taxa invasive species database and mapping tool for documenting and sharing invasive species observations.
New York Flora Atlas – a source of information for the distribution of plants within the state of New York.

Wetland Fact Sheets

EPA Wetlands: Protecting Life and Property from Flooding
EPA Wetlands: Functions and Values
Wetland Restoration, US EPA
Threats to Wetlands, US EPA
USGS – About Wetlands

Wetland Training Courses/Organizations

Environmental Concern – Wetland delineation
Rutgers Office of Continuing Professional Education – Wetland training courses
The Swamp School – Field and online-based wetland training
Richard Chinn Environmental Training, Inc. – Wetland delineation training and wetland training since 1994
Institute for Wetland & Environmental Education & Research – providing high-quality technical training to professionals in the field of environmental sciences
Wetland Training Institute – Online and In-person wetland training courses throughout the United States

Wetland Restoration Site Identification

Some Characteristics of A Wetland Site with High Restoration Potential:

an interested landowner who appreciates the ecological and/ or watershed benefits of wetlands
physical properties of the site including:
- low slopes
- “heavy” soils with little sand and gravel content
physical properties should not include
- high quality existing wetland features including shrub, forested, or wet meadow wetlands without obvious degradation
- a stream with the objective of creating an impoundment
access for heavy equipment
ditching or evidence of on site tile in a fallow area
Funding is unavailable through other government programs