- Polygons must be mapped to the National Wetlands Inventory (NWI) standard.
Read the section on mapping in the WVWRAM User Manual.
Avoid slivers or gaps between polygons that share a boundary. There should be no overlapping polygons.
(Hint: use "auto-complete polygon" to draw successive touching polygons in ArcGIS).
- Carefully review the NWI attribute codes to be sure your codes are complete and correct.
Any validation errors (slivers, overlapping polygons, adjacent polygons with the same NWI code) must be corrected prior to launching the WVWRAM GIS Tool. When the GIS Tool has run successfully, the results are output to a table. An email will be sent to you with your results in an Excel spreadsheet.
Note that the results of the GIS tool are preliminary. A full functional assessment requires that a rapid field assessment be conducted. The results of this GIS tool are input into the WVWRAM Database and merged with the field data to produce a final score.
Add a zipped shapefile containing validated wetland polygons to the map.
"Draw Polygon" may only be selected for wetland sites consisting of a single polygon. Only one polygon can be drawn & submitted at each session using this input method. If your wetland contains more than one polygon, then you must choose the Shapefile input method. For example, if your wetland contains both a shrub swamp and an emergent wetland, and each of these is at least 0.1 acre in size, then you must choose the Shapefile input method.
Mode: Zoom/Pan
"KML" may only be selected for wetland sites consisting of a single polygon. Only one polygon can be loaded & submitted at each session using this input method. If your wetland contains more than one polygon, then you must choose the Shapefile input method. For example, if your wetland contains both a shrub swamp and an emergent wetland, and each of these is at least 0.1 acre in size, then you must choose the Shapefile input method.