Map of resilient wetlands for the Climate Passages Project

This dataset was created for The Nature Conservancy (TNC) by the Desert
Research Institute (DRI) under a contract entitled Climate Passages (BLM
L22AC00234-00). The purpose of this effort was to generate a 500 meter
raster grid that would serve as a basemap for species dispersal modeling.
The grid represents the distribution of wetland areas whose properties
were similar to sites that TNC expects to remain resilient under climate
change pressures due to persistent groundwater sources. TNC identified 37
resilient terrestrial wetland areas corresponding to 127 grid cells. These
were contrasted with 160 grid cells from other wetlands in the study area
that demonstrated interannual drought sensitivity based on climate data
and the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) from Landsat
satellite imagery since 1985. The persistence of larger water bodies since
1985 was mapped using a threshold of Landsat near infrared reflectance and
the modified normalized difference wetness index (MNDWI). A logistic
regression based on the mean July NDVI from 2015 to 2024, the correlation
between July NDVI and the Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration
Index since 1985, and distance from persistent water bodies was able to
back-classify the 287 sites with an overall accuracy of 88.8 %, producer’s
accuracy of 85.8 %, and user’s accuracy of 89.3 %. Rasters are listed in
the README.