Mask to hide intermittent inundation - Louisiana

Mask to hide intermittent inundation - Louisiana.  Used in conjunction with other layers to evaluate the accuracy of a statewide (Louisiana) assessment of habitat suitable for alligator gar spawning using the techniques described in Allen et. al 2020.  <div><div><br /></div><div><div style='margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em;'>Allen, Y., K. Kimmel, and G. Constant. 2020. Using Remote Sensing to Assess Alligator Gar Spawning Habitat Suitability in the Lower Mississippi River. North American Journal of Fisheries Management 40:580–594.</div></div></div><div style='margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em;'><br /></div><div style='margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em;'><div style='margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em;'>Inundation Extent was developed using techniques presented in Allen (2016).    </div><div style='margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em;'><br /></div><div style='margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em;'>Allen, Y. 2016. Landscape Scale Assessment of Floodplain Inundation Frequency Using Landsat Imagery. River Research and Applications 32:1609–1620.</div><div style='margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em;'><br /></div><div style='margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em;'>In large river ecosystems, the timing, extent, duration and frequency of floodplain inundation greatly affect the quality of fish and wildlife</div><div style='margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em;'>habitat and the supply of important ecosystem goods and services. Seasonal high flows provide connectivity from the river to the floodplain,</div><div style='margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em;'>and seasonal inundation of the floodplain governs ecosystem structure and function. River regulation and other forms of hydrologic alteration</div><div style='margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em;'>have altered the connectivity of many rivers with their adjacent floodplain – impacting the function of wetlands on the floodplain and in turn,</div><div style='margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em;'>impacting the mainstem river function. Conservation and management of remaining floodplain resources can be improved through a better</div><div style='margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em;'>understanding of the spatial extent and frequency of inundation at scales that are relevant to the species and/or ecological processes of interest. <span style='text-indent:-2em;'>Spatial data products describing dynamic aspects floodplain inundation are, however, not widely available. This study used Landsat </span><span style='text-indent:-2em;'>imagery to generate multiple observations of inundation extent under varying hydrologic conditions to estimate inundation frequency. Inundation </span><span style='text-indent:-2em;'>extent was estimated for 50 Landsat scenes and 1334 total images within the Gulf Coastal Plains and Ozarks Landscape Conservation </span><span style='text-indent:-2em;'>Cooperative (GCPO LCC), a conservation science partnership working in a 730 000-km2 region in the south central USA. These data were </span><span style='text-indent:-2em;'>composited into a landscape mosaic to depict relative inundation frequency over the entire GCPO LCC. An analytical methodology is presented </span><span style='text-indent:-2em;'>for linking the observed inundation extent and frequency with long-term gage measurements so that the outcomes may be useful in </span><span style='text-indent:-2em;'>defining meaningful critical thresholds for a variety of floodplain dependent organisms as well as important ecological processes. Published </span><span style='text-indent:-2em;'>2015. This article is a U.S. Government work and is in the public domain in the USA</span></div></div>