Mapping New Jersey's Vernal Pools

The loss of this critical habitat put the species that depend on vernal pools for breeding habitat at risk. Click here and rollover the image to view an example of vernal pool habitat loss. Who is involved in this project?

In conjunction with new, long-awaited Department of Environmental Protection legislation adopted in September 2001 that affords vernal pools protection, the Endangered and Nongame Species Program's established its Vernal Pool Project, which is dedicated effort mapping and surveying vernal pools throughout the state. Vernal pools that provide documented habitat for certain amphibian and reptiles species (= certified) will be afforded regulatory protection through the new rule.

Eventually these certified vernal pools will also be integrated as a data layer into the Landscape Project's Critical Habitat Mapping, which is a comprehensive map of New Jersey's wildlife habitat intended to assist land use planning. Because of their ephemeral nature and small size, locating vernal pools with conventional mapping is a challenging task. Therefore,The Rutgers University Center for Remote Sensing & Spatial Analysis (CRSSA) has been contracted to develop a suite of computer-aided techniques to identify and delineate vernal ponds in New Jersey using an assortment of on-screen digitizing, image processing and GIS-based classification techniques.

[Summary provided by Rutgers University.]