Using the Cartographic Depth-to-Water Index to Locate Small Streams and Associated Wet Areas across Landscapes

With increasing scarcity of natural resources, there is a need to provide resource managers and planners with maps that reliably inform about areas vulnerable to hydrological risks, including areas with ephemeral to intermittent flows. This paper demonstrates that the newly developed Wet-Areas Mapping (WAM) process using LiDAR-based point cloud data addresses some of these needs. This is done by portraying local flow patterns, soil drainage, soil moisture regimes and natural vegetation type across mapped areas in a numerically robust and consistent manner. As a result, WAM-derived maps are useful for “surprise-free” operations planning in several areas of natural resource planning (forestry, parks and recreation, oil and gas extraction, land reclamation), and also serve as field guides for locating and delineating flow channels, road-stream crossings, wet areas and wetlands.