Artificial Water Features and Wetlands in the Tampa Bay Watershed, Florida, U.S.A. in the1950s and in 2007

This project consists of 5 files, a ReadMe (text) and four geospatial shapefiles generated in ArcPro 3.0.4. (ESRI). Two shapefiles depict the distribution and spatial extent of artificial water features (AWFs, e.g., reservoirs, stormwater retention ponds) in the 1950s and in 2007 in the Tampa Bay Watershed. The other two depict the distribution and spatial extent of wetlands in the 1950s and in 2007 in the Tampa Bay Watershed. We used a combination of heads-up digitizing (while observing 1950s aerial black and white aerial imagery) and reference to ancillary datasets to map wetlands and AWFs in the 1950s. We based the wetlands 2007 map off the land use land cover dataset published by SWFWMD (2008). We similarly based the 2007 AWF dataset on the SWFWMD LULC dataset but additionally digitized AWF features while referencing aerial imagery and products supplied by the Mosaic Company.Additional method descriptions can be found in Rains et al. 2013 (wetland datasets, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13157-013-0455-4) and in Rains et al. (2023) titled <i>Reorganizing the waterscape: asymmetric loss of wetlands and gain of artificial water features in a mixed-use watershed</i> (AWF and change datasets). We initially developed the two wetland datasets, in collaboration with the Balmoral Group, to support a wetland area change analysis in the Tampa Bay Watershed. We subsequently used these datasets in our present work (Rains et al. 2023) to analyze change in wetland distribution, configuration, and geometry (e.g., perimeter length). The wetland datasets are not meant as a map of jurisdictional wetlands.<br>