Linear Ditches of Northeastern U.S. Coastal Marshes from Maine to Virginia Derived from 2023 2D Aerial Imagery Basemap

Salt marshes of the Northeastern United States (Maine to Virginia) are vulnerable to loss given their history of intensive human alteration. One direct human modification – ditching – was common across the Northeast for salt hay farming since European Colonization and for mosquito control in the first half of the 20th century. We hand-digitized linear ditches across Northeastern intertidal emergent wetlands from contemporary aerial imagery within the bounds of the National Wetland Inventory's Estuarine Intertidal Emergent Wetland areas.