GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION SYSTEM APPLICATIONS 

 FOR MARSH MANAGEMENT PLANS 



Pierre Bourgeois, John Barras, Bo Blackmon, Darryl Clark 



Louisiana Department of Natural Resources 



Coastal Management Division 



P.O. Box 44487 



Baton Rouge, LA 70804 



ABSTRACT 



A Geographic Information System's (GIS) main function is to efficiently update, retrieve, analyze, 

 and output spatially referenced data in tabular or graphic form. The Coastal Management Division 

 (CMD) manages an interactive software package, consisting of the Analytical Mapping System 

 (AMS) Map Overlay Statistical System (MOSS), and Earth Resources Data Analysis System 

 (ERDAS) on a Data General MV/10000 computer. 



Marsh management plans have been digitized into CMD's computer system through the AMS 

 package. From the AMS system, the plans are exported to the MOSS system, which is primarily 

 used for data manipulation and analysis. MOSS workups can be done on individual marsh 

 management plans using the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service habitat and acreage data from 1956 and 

 1978. In addition, the marsh management plans can be exported to ERDAS where the 1985 

 classified Landsat Thematic Mapper information can be extracted for individual marsh management 

 plans. Our study concentrates on a marsh management plan in the eastern portion of Cameron 

 Parish, LA 



INTRODUCTION 



The Coastal Management Division (CMD) of the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources 

 (DNR) is one of several State and Federal agencies responsible for managing the State's coastal 

 wetlands. CMD maintains an extensive collection of information sources consisting of maps, aerial 

 photographs, satellite imagery, and permit records for the purpose of assessing the impact of 

 proposed activities within Louisiana's coastal zone. CMD uses a geographic information system 

 (GIS), Mapping Overlay Statistical System (MOSS), and image processing system (IPS), Earth 

 Resources Data Analysis System (ERDAS), for project impact analysis within the coastal zone. 

 MOSS is a public-domain, vector-based GIS software package developed by the USFWS for natural 

 resource and land cover evaluation. ERDAS is a vendor-developed, cell-based image processing 

 system which is primarily used by CMD for classification of Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) 

 imagery but can also perform GIS functions. MOSS and ERDAS together form CMD's interactive 

 system and are operated on a Data General MV/1000 minicomputer. 



Most analyses in MOSS use the 1956 and 1978 digital ecological characterization (habitat) maps 

 created for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) as overlays for 1:24,000 U.S. Geological 

 Survey (USGS) quadrangle maps. These maps subdivide each quadrangle map into land cover and 

 land use polygons ranging in size from an acre to several thousand acres. A wetland classification 

 scheme (Cowardin et al. 1979) based on a hierarchal structure of 1) system and subsystem, 2) class 

 and subclass, and 3) modifiers such as, water regime, water chemistry, and soil was used to identify 

 approximately 130 habitat types (Wicker 1981). The habitat maps were derived from 1956 and 



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