International Journal of Applied Earth Observations and Geoinformation 105 (2021) 102581

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

International Journal of Applied Earth

Observations and Geoinformation
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jag

Machine learning with high-resolution aerial imagery and data fusion to

improve and automate the detection of wetlands
Santiago López-Tapia a, Pablo Ruiz a, b, Mitchell Smith c, Jeffrey Matthews d, Bradley Zercher e,
Liliana Sydorenko f, Neelanshi Varia c, Yuanzhe Jin a, Minzi Wang d, Jennifer B. Dunn g, h, i, *,
Aggelos K. Katsaggelos a, h, i
a
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA
b
OriGen.AI, Brooklyn, NY, USA
c
Department of Computer Science, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA
d
Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA
e
Illinois Natural History Survey, Prairie Research Institute, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA
f
Department of Environmental Science, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA
g
Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA
h
Center for Engineering Sustainability and Resilience, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA
i
Northwestern-Argonne Institute of Science and Engineering, Evanston, IL, USA

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Wetlands serve many important ecosystem services, yet the United States lacks up-to-date, high-resolution
Machine learning wetland inventories. New, automated techniques for developing wetland segmentation maps from high-
Wetland resolution aerial imagery can improve our understanding of the location and amount of wetlands. We assem­
High-resolution aerial imagery
bled training and testing data sets (patch sizes of 28 × 28 m2 and 56 × 56 m2) of high-resolution aerial imagery
Segmentation
Neural networks
of wetlands using Illinois Natural History Survey wetland location data and National Agricultural Imagery
Project data. Each patch was labeled as wetland or non-wetland. To augment these data sets with additional
information, we incorporated digital surface and digital terrain models and topographic wetness index data in
the same two patch sizes. Subsequently, we evaluated convolutional neural network (CNN) and Gaussian
process-based machine learning methods to produce wetland segmentation maps. We developed the best per­
forming method into a new CNN algorithm, WetSegNet. It exhibited an area under the curve of 98% when used
with 56 × 56 m2 patch sizes. WetSegNet developed reliable wetland segmentation maps in test cases in which
wetlands would have gone undetected using only the National Land Cover Database. The development of
WetSegNet exemplifies the types of data sets and methods that are needed to accelerate the use of high-resolution
aerial imagery towards an improved understanding of wetlands. This algorithm could be used by state and
federal agencies or other groups to identify wetlands with higher accuracy and at a finer scale than previously
possible.

1. Introduction
In the United States, the Renewable Fuel Standard, which aims to
spur the adoption of biofuels, has caused controversy regarding the
amount of uncultivated grasslands, wetlands, and forests (“natural
lands”) that would become corn or soy farms to produce biofuels. To
evaluate agricultural land expansion in the United States each year, the
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency relies on several data sets,
including the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Cropland Data Layer
(CDL), the National Land Cover Database (NLCD), and the National
Wetlands Inventory (NWI) (United States Environmental Protection
Agency, 2018; U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 2020; U.S. Geological
Survey, 2016). These data sets have also been the basis of academic
studies of agricultural land expansion in the United States. For example,
Alemu et al. (2020) used the CDL to assess agricultural expansion in the
ecologically important Prairie Pothole Region, which spans portions of
the Dakotas and Minnesota and reaches into Canada. They estimated
agricultural expansion into grassland and wetlands in this region.

* Corresponding author at: Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA.
E-mail address: jennifer.dunn1@northwestern.edu (J.B. Dunn).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jag.2021.102581
Received 8 February 2021; Received in revised form 30 September 2021; Accepted 9 October 2021
Available online 24 October 2021
1569-8432/© 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
S. López-Tapia et al.
Similarly, Johnston (2013) integrated data from the NWI, the CDL, and
the NLCD to characterize wetland loss from agricultural expansion in the
Prairie Pothole Region within the Dakotas. Finally, Lark et al. (2015)
and Wright et al. (2017) have undertaken CDL-based studies aiming to
quantify agricultural expansion in the United States. The coarse scale of
the CDL and NLCD (30 m) and the age of NWI data (founded on imagery
collected in the 1980 s) limit the ability to quantify areas of natural land
– small wetlands in particular - with certainty (Copenhaver et al., 2021).
The presence of small wetlands is important to capture because they
offer important ecosystem services (Christensen et al., 2016; Matthews
et al., 2016; Van Meter and Basu, 2015) but will not be captured by data
sets such as the NLCD that are at a 30 m resolution.
To improve the accuracy and efficiency of agricultural land expan­
sion assessments, new techniques are needed that leverage aerial and
satellite imagery to detect the presence of ecologically important lands
including wetlands (Maxwell et al., 2019). Wetlands offer many
ecosystem services including flood abatement, water quality improve­
ment and biodiversity support yet they are globally threatened (Zedler,
2003). Imagery data sources for this purpose include the National
Agricultural Imagery Project (NAIP) (1 m resolution), RapidEye (5 m),
Landsat (30 m), and the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradi­
ometer (250–1000 m). Previous studies have used these data to develop
algorithms for mapping wetlands and wetland dynamics, but the reso­
lution of these studies is 30 m, which may be too coarse to detect
ecologically important small wetlands. With ground-truthed imagery
from NAIP and Landsat and subsequent image classification and vali­
dation, Xie et al. (2015) mapped wetlands (overall accuracy 89%, 30 m
resolution) and invasive species using Landsat imagery with NAIP im­
agery as ground reference data. Pekel et al. (2016) used Landsat images
to quantify changes in wetland area at a 30 m resolution and developed
the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre Global Surface Water
products. Wu et al. (2019) developed an algorithm that analyzes NAIP
and Google Earth Engine imagery to map wetlands (30 m resolution) in
the Prairie Pothole Region and evaluated wetland inundation dynamics.
Wu et al. determined that their method often detected small, sub-hectare
wetland features that the Joint Research Commission’s Monthly Water
History project did not. It is clear that efficient methods for detecting
wetlands of this size are important to protect them.
Several ML-based techniques have been proposed to develop seg­
mentation of land cover (e.g., cropland versus natural lands), in general,
with both aerial imagery and remote sensing products, including the
CDL and NLCD. Deep learning, especially, has shown promise for these
tasks. In their review paper, Ma et al. (2019) mention heavy use of
recurrent neural networks, deep belief networks, convolutional neural
networks (CNNs), autoencoders, and generative adversarial networks
for image fusion, image registration, scene classification, object detec­
tion, land use and land cover classification, segmentation, and object-
based image analysis. Specific examples include the application of
deep learning such as CNNs on multispectral data to characterize land
cover. Additionally, IrrMapper (Ketchum et al., 2020) is an ML model for
mapping irrigated agricultural lands; it provides 90.8% accuracy for
land cover mapping when compared to Census of Agriculture irrigation
estimates based on Landsat imagery using Random Forests. Maxwell
et al. (2019) used geographic object-based image analysis and Random
Forest-based classification on NAIP data for general land cover mapping
and achieved an accuracy of 96.7%.
The effectiveness of ML methods for image analysis can be enhanced
through integration of additional data including LiDAR-derived Digital
Elevation Models (DEM), the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index,
the Soil Survey Geographic Database, and the Topographic Wetness
Index (TWI). With such fusion approaches, a robust classifier is devel­
oped by integrating multiple sources of imagery and remote sensing
products to inform the classification process. For example, Wu et al.’s
wetland inundation dynamics-mapping algorithm (Wu et al., 2019) in­
tegrates LiDAR and NWI data. Rapinel et al. (2015) concluded that
wetland habitat mapping and classification accuracies improved
2
International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation 105 (2021) 102581
substantially when LiDAR data were combined with multispectral Earth
observation data (86.5%), as opposed to a classifier using solely multi­
spectral imagery (29–59%). Using the Google Earth Engine cloud
calculation to classify land cover types, Huang et al. (2017) used Landsat
imagery and corresponding Normalized Difference Vegetation Index
data to understand major land dynamic changes resulting from urban­
ization and afforestation in Beijing, including wetland loss and conver­
sion. The classification map they developed had an overall accuracy of
86%. By combining multiple high-resolution remote sensing and
geographic information system data sets, such as NWI, DEM, and the Soil
Survey Geographic Database, Kloiber et al. (2015) developed a data
fusion update for an inventory of a Minnesota region’s wetlands.
Despite progress in the application of ML methods to high-resolution
imagery analysis for wetland segmentation, important gaps remain. One
foundation that makes ML methods possible is high-resolution, wetland-
specific testing and training data sets. Such data sets are not widely
available. Additionally, no studies have compared the performance of
different ML and data fusion approaches. Furthermore, no previous ML
approach generated segmentation maps at high resolution (1 m), which
allows detection of very small wetlands.
We report herein several advances we have made to address these
gaps in data availability and methods development for wetland detec­
tion in high-resolution aerial imagery. First, we developed a unique
testing and training data set of Illinois wetlands that can be used in ML-
based algorithms for wetland detection. We used this data set to evaluate
CNN- and Gaussian Process (GP)-based methods for segmentation of
wetlands using high-resolution (1 m) NAIP data. Seeing a need for al­
gorithms that could improve the performance of existing methods, we
developed a new ML architecture to generate wetland segmentation
maps. The high resolution of these segmentations is particularly critical
given the importance of capturing the presence and extent of small
wetlands. We also explored the effect of variables, such as image patch
size and fusion of NAIP data with geophysical data sets including DEM
and TWI, on the accuracy of wetland segmentation. Our efforts focused
on the State of Illinois, with the goal of developing a general method that
could be expanded to other regions, because the Illinois Natural History
Survey (INHS) has produced a unique wetland location dataset that we
used to train and test the ML algorithms we developed.
2. Materials and methods
The study area included the entire State of Illinois, USA. Climate in
Illinois is continental, with cold winters and warm, humid summers.
Average annual precipitation varies from 1,220 mm in the south to 890
mm in the north (Illinois State Climatologist’s Office, 2021). The
topography is relatively flat, with elevation in the state ranging from 85
to 376 m. Several types of wetlands exist within Illinois, including fens
and bogs in the northeastern part of the state, and herbaceous-
dominated marshes and wet meadows, ponds with floating-leaved and
submerged vegetation, and forested wetlands bordering streams
throughout the state (Mohlenbrock, 2014). Wetlands are estimated to
have once covered approximately 23% of Illinois, but up to 90% of this
wetland area has been destroyed due to drainage and land-use change
(Suloway and Hubbell, 1994). The next three subsections describe how
we developed training and testing data sets, trained the model, and then
used it to segment wetlands in NAIP data. Fig. 1 provides a flow chart of
our methodology.
2.1. Data sets
To segment wetlands in Illinois in high-resolution aerial imagery, we
created unique tailored training and testing data sets for wetlands in the
state. Prior data sets (Basu et al., 2015) were used with classical machine
learning approaches (Deep Belief Networks and RF) and were smaller,
having few instances, not being suited for training DL models without
overfitting. They also used imagery acquired from across the United
S. López-Tapia et al.
Fig. 1. Methodology for developing testing and training data sets, training and evaluating the model, and generating segmentation maps. Green rounded rectangles
indicate data. Blue rectangles indicate a process or calculation. Red hexagons indicate output. (For interpretation of the references to color in this figure legend, the
reader is referred to the web version of this article.)
States without geotagging. It is therefore not possible to know whether
imagery from Illinois was included. Given regional wetland variation,
inclusion of some regionally specific data, i.e., imagery that is known to
be from Illinois, is required for generation of accurate results.
Our training and testing data sets were based on Illinois wetland
location data from the Illinois Natural History Survey (INHS), collected
on-site between 2002 and 2018 from environmental survey corridors
where Illinois Department of Transportation projects were slated to
occur (Matthews et al., 2016). All wetlands within these corridors are
identified and delineated following U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
methodology. At each wetland, the observer walked the edge of the
wetland with a GPS unit to capture the extent of the wetland as a
polygon.
To be considered a wetland, positive evidence is required for the
presence of hydrophytic vegetation, wetland hydrology, and hydric soils
(Environmental Laboratory, 1987; U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 2010).
INHS data span 95 counties and approximately 2,600 ha. Wetlands
include ponds with submerged or floating vegetation, marshes, wet
meadows, wet shrublands, and forested wetlands. While the data also
include information about wetland class (Cowardin et al. 1979), we did
not account for these differences in our analysis because wetland class is
not required for evaluation of agricultural expansion to meet the stat­
utory requirements of the Renewable Fuel Standard. The INHS data set
offers a higher resolution (1 m) compared to the NLCD data set (30 m)
and is more recent than the NWI data, which was originally delineated
manually from 1980 s-era aerial imagery and is only partially updated
by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as it receives data from partner
institutions and state governments. Although NWI data are the most
widely available wetland maps in Illinois and much of the U.S., the data
contain inaccuracies (Matthews et al., 2016; Stolt and Baker, 1995). In
Illinois, many areas mapped as forested wetlands on NWI maps are often
not truly wetlands, and many small (~ <0.06 ha) wetlands are omitted
(Matthews et al., 2016).
Notably, the INHS data is unique as a ground-truth wetland-delin­
eating data set. While various state environmental or natural resource
departments in the Midwest may possess similar data sets, these often
contain personal identifiable information that prevents data sharing.
Other wetland delineation projects are conducted privately, often
commissioned as part of environmental impact reports associated with
new construction projects, and are thus of limited scale.
3
International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation 105 (2021) 102581
Using the INHS wetland location data, we extracted 28 × 28 m2 and
56 × 56 m2 patches from images of Illinois at a 1-m ground sample space
resolution from 2010, 2012, 2014, 2015, and 2017, from images that
were taken between June and September of each year (Table 1). This
was done to ensure that the maximum extent of wetlands was repre­
sented. Notably, this time period represents the peak of the growing
season in Illinois, when wetland vegetation is most clearly identifiable
on imagery. The June-September time period also largely overlaps the
season of INHS field data collection. Hard copy NAIP data were pur­
chased directly from the United States Department of Agriculture Aerial
Photography Field Office. While NAIP data is freely available online,
artefacts can be introduced during image compression, and we found
that the hard-copy data had fewer artifacts and visual imperfections. It
should be noted that overall, imagery varied in quality from 2010 to
2017 (Fig. 2).
Digital surface model (DSM), digital terrain model (DTM), and TWI
data were used to supplement the imagery in our analysis. The DSM and
DTM are types of elevation data generated from LiDAR point cloud data
collected via aerial fly-overs. The DSM data capture all surface features,
both man-made and natural. The DTM data (used to calculate the TWI)
were processed to remove these surface features, leaving behind only
natural terrain features, similar to a bare-Earth surface. Both DSM and
DTM can improve the detection of forested wetlands that are not
distinguishable in the NAIP data. All DTM and DSM data are collected by
county and publicly available online from the Illinois Natural Resources
Geospatial Data Clearinghouse (Illinois State Geological Survey Prairie
Research Institute, 2020). Temporal resolution varies by county. While a
statewide image server is available for accessing the Illinois Clearing­
house data, the county-level data are merged, upscaled, and downscaled
using an unspecified method. To avoid over-processing the data and to
ensure that we used the highest resolution data, we downloaded each
county’s data individually instead of using the statewide image server.
TWI data were derived from the Illinois Clearinghouse DTM data
using a public ArcPy script (Wolf and Fricker, 2013). TWI is a measure of
how ‘wet’ a certain point is, based on water flow direction, flow accu­
mulation, slope, and other features of surrounding elevation data (Bal­
lerine, 2017). We expect that areas with high wetness indices exhibit
water accumulation and are more likely to be wetlands.
From the DSM, DTM, and TWI data, we extracted 28 × 28 m2 and 56
× 56 m2 patches to correspond with the NAIP patches. The 28 × 28 m2
S. López-Tapia et al.
Table 1
Raw data sources for creating training and testing data sets.
Data Type Source Dates
Aerial NAIP 2010, 2012, 2014, 2015, 2017(all June-
Imagery September)
DSM and Illinois Clearinghouse 2008–2018 (varies by county)
DTM
TWI Derived from DEM
data
Fig. 2. Example of change in imagery quality from NAIP in 2010, 2014, and 2017 (left to right).
size was selected following previous studies in automatic wetland
detection (Basu et al., 2015). We included the 56 × 56 m2 size to test the
effect of providing more context information to the algorithm. Table 1
summarizes key features of the data sources we used. The next section
describes the patch extraction process in detail.
2.2. Patch extraction: Data set generation
All of the 28 × 28 and 56 × 56 m2 patches from NAIP and the de­
rivative DSM, DTM, and TWI data were extracted using various ArcPy
Python scripts that we developed. INHS data were first preprocessed to
yield a 28 × 28 m2 cell, whose center was computed. For each center, a
28 × 28 m2 and 56 × 56 m2 patch were extracted for each year. Because
of the 28 × 28 m2 cell, 56 × 56 m2 have overlap. The overlap within the
larger patches did not influence our analysis because we only classified
the center pixel of each patch. All 28 × 28 m2 NAIP patches were
manually reviewed to determine whether they contained wetlands. The
30,222 patches that did not contain wetland pixels in the 28 × 28 m2
patches were excluded from both the 28x28 m2 and the 56 × 56 m2
patch data set. This step was important because since the INHS data
were collected between the years 2002 and 2018 while NAIP imagery
was collected in 2010, 2012, 2014, 2015 and 2017, man-made con­
struction could have destroyed a fraction of the INHS-recorded wet­
lands. Across all five years of NAIP data, we collected 122,383 patches of
imagery for each of the two patch sizes.
For the derivative data, extraction followed a similar methodology
based on the center of each INHS data patch, after correcting for dif­
ferences in county-level resolution in the Clearinghouse Illinois DTM
and DSM data. DTM and DSM data were first geometrically aligned and
either upscaled or downscaled to 1-m resolution to match that of the
NAIP data. Then the TWI data were calculated using the previously
mentioned public ArcPy script. Performing these calculations after the
DTM was resized to a common resolution instead of performing them on
the DTM data at its native resolution was essential for keeping the TWI
patches consistent across all counties. The TWI was calculated from a
subset of the DTM data limited to a 250-m radius around each patch
center. A 250-m radius was sufficiently large to reveal prominent
4
International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation 105 (2021) 102581
Bands Resolution pixel/ Total covered
m2 area
Red, Green, Blue (RGB), Near Infrared 1 149,998 km2
(4)
2
1
features of the area included in the patch. Moreover, using only a subset
of the DTM data also significantly reduced overall processing time. After
all DSM, DTM, and TWI patches were extracted, some of them did not
have reliable information (due, for example, to cloud cover), and were
therefore removed from the dataset, bringing the number of patches
from 122,383 to 116,380.
To build a data set of non-wetland images, we extracted 120,000
random patches from Will County, Illinois from NAIP, DTM, DSM, and
TWI data. The same extraction processes and patch sizes used for the
wetland data were performed. To minimize wetland patches in the non-
wetland data, the INHS data regions were excluded from the possible
extraction regions within Will County. Areas classified as wetlands in the
NWI data were also excluded.
The resulting training data set contained 189,117 patches, 93,105 of
which were wetlands and 96,012 were non-wetlands. The testing data
set contained 47,263 patches, 23,275 of which were wetlands and
23,988 were non-wetlands. The split between training and test was
performed randomly, selecting 80% of the samples for training and the
remaining 20% for testing.
2.3. Development of ML algorithms
We developed ML algorithms for wetland segmentation by fusing
high-resolution NAIP data with additional data from DTM, DSM, and
TWI. We investigated several classification algorithms and supplemental
data sources. The training and testing of the classifiers were based on 28
× 28 m2 and 56 × 56 m2 image patches. During training, each patch
carried a binary label of wetland or non-wetland.
We compare the performance of four state-of-the-art ML algorithms.
Two ML algorithms were based on GPs and two were based on deep
neural network architectures.
Using GPs required the extraction of a set of hand-crafted features
from each patch. Our first GP-based approach used the 47 features
proposed in a study using NAIP (Basu et al., 2015). We incorporated an
additional four features calculated from the mean of each of the TWI,
DSM, DTM, and DSM-DTM patches. We incorporated these additional
features because we found out that using NAIP data alone would lead to
S. López-Tapia et al.
incorrect classifications in some instances, for example, for patches with
wetlands hidden in non-wetland wooded areas. We call this model Basu-
GP. The second GP model, that we named VGG16-GP, use the features
extracted by the last convolutional layer of VGG16 (Simonyan and Zis­
serman, 2014) for the RGB, near infrared, TWI, and DSM-DTM data,
resulting in a total of 2,048 features (512 for each type of data). For both
GP models, we used the Scalable Variational Gaussian Process for
Classification proposed in (Hensman et al., 2015) with a Radial Bias
Function kernel with Automatic Relevance Determination, 100 inducing
points, and a minibatch size of 1,000 samples. The Adam optimizer
(Kingma and Ba, 2014) was used to estimate the parameters of the
model, setting the learning rate to 0.005 and the number of iterations to
10,000.
The third ML model we designed and implemented was a CNN,
which requires large amounts of training data. CNNs perform feature
extraction and therefore produce a classification from the raw pixels of
each patch. Fig. 3 depicts the architecture of the CNN we developed, a
residual CNN based on ResNet (He et al., 2015) and referred to as
WetSegNet. One of the building blocks of the proposed architecture is
the residual block structure proposed in (Zagoruyko and Komodakis,
2016), which was found to provide better results for classification than
the original ResNet. In addition, the model was significantly downscaled
from the original 54 layers to only 28 layers to reduce its capacity and to
ensure effective training, i.e., avoid overfitting. It was evaluated that for
the problem at hand the reduced network capacity was adequate to
provide very good performance. The use of the residual design signifi­
cantly eased the training of the network, especially for the first layers
(see (He et al., 2015)).
With the WetSegNet model, we experimented with patches of both
sizes (28 × 28 m2 and 56 × 56 m2) and investigated the effect on the
performance of the architecture when fusing the DSM, DTM, and TWI
data. Because CNNs learn to perform feature extraction from the data,
adapting them to patches of different sizes is straightforward. In per­
forming fusion of the DSM, DTM, and TWI data, we chose early fusion
and concatenation of the color and near infrared channels of the NAIP
image, as all of the data were image-type. In contrast, GP and similar
traditional ML classifiers (like RF and Support Vector Machines) are not
able to perform automatic feature extraction, and therefore the design
and extraction of new hand-crafted features was required each time we
wanted to fuse more data sources. As already mentioned, the incorpo­
ration of elevation data allowed the algorithm to detect wetlands in
those cases where the surface of the terrain was not visible (e.g.,
woodlands).
WetSegNet was trained using the Adam optimizer (Kingma and Ba,
2014), setting the initial learning rate to 10-3. If the training error did not
Fig. 3. Architecture of the proposed WetSegNet CNN. All convolutional layers use a 3x3 kernel. The symbol “/2” indicates a stride 2 convolution, i.e., a convolution
that results in dividing the spatial resolution of the input by 2. If the input is a 28x28 m2 patch, the last average polling (AVG Pool) layer reduces each spatial
dimension by a factor of 3 instead of 7. WRB, wide residual block.
5
International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation 105 (2021) 102581
decrease by at least 10-3 during five epochs, then the learning rate was
divided by 10. The training ends when the learning rate reaches 10-6. To
avoid overfitting, we used weight decay with a value of 10-4 and Dropout
(23) with 0.1 probability before each fully connected layer. We used the
Binary Cross Entropy (BCE) loss function, that is,
BCE(y, p) = − (ylog(p) + (1− y)log(1 − p) ),
where y is a binary label with values 0 or 1 and p is the predicted
probability. In the last step, we augmented the training patches by
performing random vertical and horizontal flipping and 90◦ rotations.
Finally, we investigated an existing pretrained CNN model, VGG16
(Simonyan and Zisserman, 2014), to serve as the baseline. We retrained
its last fully connected layers utilizing our data, the BCE loss function,
and the same optimization parameters as the WetSegNet architecture.
We call this model VGG-Finetuned.
2.4. Generate segmentation maps
Given a trained classifier, during testing, the methodology for
obtaining a segmentation map of an image indicating the location of the
wetlands included the following steps:
(1) Using a sliding window, patches of either 28 × 28 m2 or 56 × 56
m2 were extracted.
(2) For each patch, the trained classifier calculated the probability of
the center of the patch being a wetland. Doing this for all patches
produces a probability map with each pixel having assigned a
probability of being part of a wetland.
(3) Because the patch dimensions are even numbers, with no center
pixel, a probability map of a grid shifted by 0.5 pixels horizon­
tally and vertically was created. The probability map was then
registered to the original grid through bilinear interpolation.
(4) Finally, a threshold was applied to the probability map to classify
each pixel as wetland or non-wetland, providing a segmentation
of the wetlands in the image. The threshold was selected exper­
imentally, and we found that a threshold value equal to 0.8
produced the best results.
This methodology can be used with any ML classification algorithm,
which allowed us to the use of the four ML algorithm previously pre­
sented. Of note, the sliding window mechanism for producing segmen­
tation maps using patch-based classifiers has been described previously
(Glumov et al., 1995; Liang et al., 2012).
S. López-Tapia et al. International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation 105 (2021) 102581

3. Results the features of VGG16 with the GP, VGG16-GP, the AUC increased to
93.2%. WetSegNet without the fusion of DSM, DTM, and TWI data
We evaluated and compared the performance of the four ML models performed better than the GP methods, with an AUC of 96.1% for the 28
using our data set, based on Area Under the Receiver Operating Char­ × 28 m2 patch size and 96.7% for the 56 × 56 m2 patch size (WetSegNet-
acteristic Curve (AUC), accuracy, precision, and recall. Table 2 de­ RGBI-28 m and WetSegNet-RGBI-56 m, respectively).
lineates the results by ML model, patch size, and inclusion of DSM, DTM, In Fig. 5, we compare results with each model in segmenting wetland
and TWI data. Figs. 4 through 7 illustrate how results obtained with the in a farm field that abuts a road. The GP methods (blue outlines) missed
various models in Table 2 compared to the ground truth data from INHS. a good portion of the wetland area and exhibited some false positive
The Supporting Information contains NLCD results for the images shown results. Although VGG16-GP also uses features extracted using a CNN,
in Figs. 4–7. training VGG16 with natural images (29) reduced the effectiveness of
the features the network learned from aerial images. On the other hand,
WetSegNet-RGBI-TWI-28 m (Fig. 5c) segmented all wetlands as
3.1. Ablation study of WetSegNet: Influence of patch size and fusion of
confirmed in the ground truth data (red outline) and segmented addi­
data sources
tional area as wetland. Performance of this model was assisted by the
inclusion of TWI data (Fig. 5d) where thicker white lines indicate greater
The base model, WetSegNet-RGBI-28 m, did not include elevation
wetness. The algorithm was better able to segment wetlands with the
data and employed the 28 × 28 m2 patch size. It produced results with
TWI information incorporated. The additional area the algorithm
an AUC of 96.1%. We hypothesized that introducing more information
segmented as wetland was visually indistinguishable from the area
for each pixel with the larger patch size would reduce uncertainty. Thus,
identified as wetland in the ground truth data. We hypothesize that false
we tested the model WetSegNet-RGBI-56 m, which uses the larger patch
positive results arise because the ground truth wetland is defined based
size of 56 × 56 m2. With this change, the AUC increased to 96.7%.
on U.S. Army Corps of Engineers criteria, which include the presence of
Introducing the TWI data as a feature improved the AUC further to
hydric soils based on field measurements, the presence of hydrophytic
97.4% when the patch size was 28 × 28 m2 and 98.2% when the patch
vegetation, and evidence of wetland hydrology. Our algorithm is not
size was 56 × 56 m2 (WetSegNet-RGBI-TWI-28 m and WetSegNet-RGBI-
able to evaluate these three characteristics, thus resulting in a false
TWI-56 m, respectively). This analysis demonstrates the importance of
positive classification of an area. The NLCD (U.S. Geological Survey,
terrain information in segmenting wetlands, especially in cases when the
2016) indicates no wetlands in the patch shown in Fig. 5, indicating that
ground is not clearly visible in the image data. We also investigated the
our ML-based approaches for locating wetlands offer improvements over
case in which all TWI, DSM, and DTM were used as input to the network.
the NLCD.
Although TWI is derived from DSM and DTM this is a non-invertible
Finally, we tested the use of the features extracted by our best per­
operation and therefore some information is lost in this derivation.
forming model, WetSegNet-RGBI-TWI-56 m, to train a GP classifier in a
However, including TWI, DSM, and DTM data yielded no observable
similar fashion to VGG16-GP. This approach did not yield better results
performance increase (AUC = 97.3% and AUC = 98.1% for patch sizes of
than the CNN alone, which is consistent with the findings of previous
28 × 28 m2 [WetSegNEt-RGBI-TWI-DEM-28 m] and 56 × 56 m2 [Wet­
research (Wilson et al., 2016). By training end-to-end, CNNs project the
SegNet-RGBI-TWI-DEM-56 m], respectively).
data into a space where the classes are linearly separable. Thus, the use
Fig. 4 shows a comparison of WetSegNet-RGBI-28 m, WetSegNet-
of non-linear classifiers like GPs does not significantly improve the
RGBI-56 m, WetSegNet-RGBI-28 m-TWI, and WetSegNet-RGBI-56 m-
results.
TWI. Each new modification to the input data improved the segmenta­
We created examples of segmentation maps calculated by our best
tion map obtained by the model, with the exception of a slight increase
performing model, WetSegNet-RGBI-TWI-56 m, in different scenarios
in the size of the segmented areas caused by the use of bigger patches.
and consider the underlying explanations for model performance. In
The results in Fig. 4b and d, when compared to those in Fig. 4a and c,
Figs. 6 and 7, all segmentations in the test cases are close to the ground
reveal that a larger patch size improved performance as the algorithm
truth. Sometimes, information provided to the algorithm from NAIP
was provided with more information. In this instance, the network had
imagery and the TWI data conflict. An example of this occurrence is
no false positives with 56 × 56 m2 patches, but did when the patch size
shown in Fig. 6a-b. In that case, the TWI indicates wetness in the middle
was 28 × 28 m2.
of the highway that the imagery clearly shows is present and dry. The
algorithm correctly indicates the presence of the highway, relying more
3.2. Comparison of results from different ML models on the information from the imagery. It did, however, somewhat un­
derestimate the wetland area. For the test case in Fig. 6a and 6b, NLCD
Basu-GP resulted in the lowest accuracy of all methods assessed data indicated that the wetland is only present below the highway. The
(AUC = 92.4%). Fine-tuning VGG16 (Simonyan and Zisserman, 2014), NLCD (see Supplementary Information) indicated that the area depicted
VGG-Finetuned, achieved similar results (AUC = 92.4%). When we used in Fig. 6c and 6d was entirely cultivated crops with no wetland present.
For these test cases, the ML-based model outperformed the NLCD.
Table 2 In several instances that we considered, false positive wetlands in
Comparison of the proposed models for wetland segmentation on our testing wooded areas were likely due to occlusion in areas where the model
data set. We compared all models in terms of Area Under the ROC Curve (AUC), can’t “see” the ground. This effect is evident in the image “Forest” in
accuracy, precision, and recall. Bold indicates the highest value in each measure. Fig. 7a. In this case, the method wrongly classified the tree-covered area
See text for details on the models used. All results reported as percents. surrounding the wetlands as wetlands, potentially because this area had
Model AUC Accuracy Precision Recall a strong response in the TWI (Fig. 7d). The NLCD (Supplementary In­
Basu-GP 92.35 81.59 80.94 82.27 formation) did report the presence of forested and emergent wetlands in
VGG16-GP 93.23 86.43 83.76 85.31 this example. With 56 m2 patch sizes in Fig. 7c and d, WetSegNet no
VGG16-Finetuned 92.43 85.25 81.01 83.74 longer identified two false positive wetlands as was the case with 28 m2
WetSegNet-RGBI-28 m 96.14 89.15 89.16 88.89 patch sizes for the same test case in Fig. 5c and d.
WetSegNet-RGBI-56 m 96.69 90.48 91.08 89.43
WetSegNet-RGBI-TWI-28 m 97.39 91.87 90.51 93.32
WetSegNet-RGBI-TWI-56 m 98.21 93.43 92.41 94.40 4. Discussion
WetSegNet-GP-RGBI-TWI-56 m 98.20 93.44 92.38 94.35
WetSegNet-RGBI-TWI-DEM-28 m 97.33 91.83 90.40 93.24 In this study, we performed a comprehensive comparison of several
WetSegNet-RGBI-TWI-DEM-56 m 98.09 92.89 91.93 94.12
ML approaches for generating wetland segmentation maps. We also

6
S. López-Tapia et al. International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation 105 (2021) 102581

Fig. 4. Visual comparison of the segmentation maps obtained by (a) WetSegNet-RGBI-28 m, (b) WetSegNet-RGBI-56 m, (c) WetSegNet-RGBI-28 m-TWI, and (d)
WetSegNet-RGBI-56 m-TWI of the test image “Urban.” Blue color indicates the area segmented by each model and red indicates the ground truth (INHS). (For
interpretation of the references to color in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)

developed a new architecture, WetSegNet, which outperformed all other
methods we investigated. The approach we used in developing Wet­
SegNet is unique because we applied ML directly to raw pixels to
generate segmentation maps at high resolution (1 m).
WetSegNet achieved high accuracy and performed well in most test
cases, especially with larger patch sizes and the inclusion of TWI data.
Compared to the other models studied, WetSegNet significantly out­
performed GP models using both hand-crafted features and features
extracted from a widely used, pretrained network (VGG16). WetSegNet
also outperformed the VGG16 network after fine tuning with our data.
Furthermore, WetSegNet detected wetlands that were undetected in the
NLCD. Information about wetland location and size from WetSegNet
could supplement existing wetland inventories.
For our analysis, we trained the models with a new data set that
contains NAIP patches of 28 × 28 m2 and 56 × 56 m2 along with TWI,
DTM, and DEM data for the same patches. The data set also contains
ground-truth training data from the INHS. This unique data set is now
publicly available (Katsaggelos et al., 2021) and may be helpful for re­
searchers using ML to interpret aerial imagery.
There are several challenges and sources of error with the data set
and models that we developed. First, the shape and location of some of
the wetlands in the INHS dataset were recorded years before the NAIP
data was taken. Thus, some of the wetlands may have changed or dis­
appeared. We worked to mitigate this issue by manually reviewing the

7
S. López-Tapia et al. International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation 105 (2021) 102581

Fig. 5. Visual comparison of the segmentation maps obtained by (a) Basu-GP, (b) VGG16-GP and (c) WetSegNet-RGBI-TWI-28 m of the test image “Rural” and (d) by
the WetSegNet-RGBI-TWI-28 m of the corresponding TWI image. Blue color indicates the area segmented by each model and red indicates the ground truth (INHS).
(For interpretation of the references to color in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)

training data set and excluding questionable data and label pairs. If some
patches remained that were not representative of wetlands, some noise
could have been introduced to the data. Although these errors should
not be significant for the evaluation of the models for segmenting wet­
lands, they can reduce the quality of the segmentation maps produced,
especially in boundary areas, which are already very difficult to delin­
eate. A second issue was that the quality of the NAIP data changed over
time, which can have a significant impact on the quality of the results.
Imagery from recent years had a higher quality (Fig. 2) and thus pro­
vided the model with more precise information. We do not have enough
images from the most recent years in our series to fully train our model
on higher quality images, but we did perform an experiment using a
much smaller version of the proposed network, using only half the
number of filters in all convolutional layers. We showed an increase in
AUC from 97.1% using images from all years to 98.0 using only images
from the most recent year (2017). Owing to our use of imagery from
multiple years (including wet years, dry years, and years with varying
image quality), the algorithm is “future proof”. That is, it can segment
wetlands for any year in which NAIP data are available.
Although the specific results of this paper should not be extrapolated
beyond the range of the training data set within the State of Illinois, the
methodology is applicable anywhere with appropriate imagery and
ground-truthed data. The characteristics of the INHS dataset, which
contains wetlands that vary greatly in vegetation cover type, from

8
S. López-Tapia et al. International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation 105 (2021) 102581

Fig. 6. Segmentation maps obtained by WetSegNet-RGBI-56 m-TWI of the test images (a) “Marsh” and (b) its corresponding TWI image, and (c) “Farm” and (d) its
corresponding TWI image. Blue color indicates the area segmented by the model and red indicates the ground truth (INHS data). (For interpretation of the references
to color in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)

ponds, to emergent marshes and wet meadows, shrub-dominated wet­
lands and forested wetlands support this expectation.
5. Conclusion
Improving methods to develop wetland segmentation maps that are
automated and make use of the growing amounts of high-resolution
aerial imagery will enable scientists, policy makers, and other stake­
holders to better track wetlands. For example, as the United States
considers the role of its land base in providing energy, especially to grow
biofuel feedstocks, the ability to monitor wetlands with confidence can
help alleviate concerns over wetland loss while pursuing policy objec­
tives that can offer other environmental benefits such as low-carbon
fuels. WetSegNet, paired with training and testing data sets derived
from ground truth data, offers an advance over state-of-the-art methods
for wetland detection, which are typically at 30-m resolution. In
contrast, WetSegNet can be used to monitor wetlands down to the 1-m
scale. Fine resolution is necessary for identifying small wetlands,
which wetland inventories often fail to detect (Christensen et al., 2016;
Matthews et al., 2016; Van Meter and Basu, 2015). The presence of small
wetlands in a landscape is important for waterfowl that use multiple
wetlands and amphibians that rely on small wetlands for breeding
(Naugle et al., 2000; Semlitsch and Bodie, 1998; Snodgrass et al., 2000).
Additionally, fine spatial resolution is essential for detecting incremen­
tal change at wetland boundaries due to encroaching land use and
altered precipitation due to climate change. Given the importance of
mapping wetlands at fine spatial resolution, as additional ground truth
data allow, we will test and refine our method in other regions and apply

9
S. López-Tapia et al. International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation 105 (2021) 102581

Fig. 7. Segmentation maps obtained by WetSegNet-RGBI-56 m-TWI of test images (a) “Forest” and (b) its corresponding TWI image, and (c) test image “Rural” and
(d) its corresponding TWI image. Blue color indicates the area segmented by the model and red indicates the ground truth (INHS data). (For interpretation of the
references to color in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)

our methods to quantify changes in wetland area. Finally, we plan to
apply a similar technique to detection of natural grasslands, another
type of natural land that is difficult to characterize based on existing
data sets with frequent errors (Dunn et al., 2017).
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Santiago López-Tapia: Methodology, Formal analysis, Writing –
original draft, Visualization. Pablo Ruiz: Conceptualization, Method­
ology, Formal analysis, Writing – original draft. Mitchell Smith: Data
curation, Formal analysis, Writing – original draft. Jeffrey Matthews:
Resources, Data curation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review &
editing. Bradley Zercher: Resources, Data curation, Writing – original
draft, Writing – review & editing. Liliana Sydorenko: Investigation,
Writing – original draft. Neelanshi Varia: Investigation, Formal anal­
ysis, Writing – original draft. Yuanzhe Jin: Formal analysis, Writing –
original draft. Minzi Wang: Investigation, Data curation. Jennifer B.
Dunn: Conceptualization, Investigation, Writing – original draft,
Writing – review & editing, Supervision, Funding acquisition. Aggelos
K. Katsaggelos: Conceptualization, Writing – original draft, Writing –

10
S. López-Tapia et al.
review & editing, Supervision, Funding acquisition.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence
the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgements
This research was supported by U.S. Department of Agriculture Na­
tional Institute of Food and Agriculture award 2018-10008-28530.
Mitchell Smith was also supported by Northwestern’s Murphey Fel­
lows Program. We acknowledge Yikuan Li and Zhili Wang of North­
western University, Michelle Wander and Nico Martin of the University
of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Steffen Mueller of the University of
Illinois at Chicago, and Josh Pritsolas of GeoSpatial Mapping, Applica­
tions, and Research Center at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville
for helpful discussions.
Appendix A. Supplementary material
Supplementary data to this article can be found online at https://doi.
org/10.1016/j.jag.2021.102581.
References
Alemu, W.G., Henebry, G.M., Melesse, A.M., 2020. Land Cover and Land Use Change in
the US Prairie Pothole Region Using the USDA Cropland Data Layer. Land 9, 166.
https://doi.org/10.3390/land9050166.
Ballerine, C., 2017. Topographic Wetness Index Urban Flooding Awareness Act Action
Support Will and DuPage Counties, Illinois Topographic Wetness Index Urban
Flooding Awareness Act Action Support Will & DuPage Counties, Illinois.
Basu, S., Ganguly, S., Mukhopadhyay, S., DiBiano, R., Karki, M., Nemani, R., 2015.
DeepSat. In: Proceedings of the 23rd SIGSPATIAL International Conference on
Advances in Geographic Information Systems - GIS ’15. ACM Press, New York, New
York, USA, pp. 1–10. Doi: 10.1145/2820783.2820816.
Christensen, J., Nash, M., Chaloud, D., Pitchford, A., 2016. Spatial distributions of small
water body types in modified landscapes: lessons from Indiana, USA: Small Water
Body Type Distributions. Ecohydrol. 9, 122–137. https://doi.org/10.1002/eco.1618.
Copenhaver, K., Hamada, Y., Mueller, S., Dunn, J.B., 2021. Examining the Characteristics
of the Cropland Data Layer in the Context of Estimating Land Cover Change. IJGI 10,
281. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijgi10050281.
Cowardin, L.M., Carter, V., Golet, F.C., LaRoe, E.T., 1979. Classification of wetlands and
deepwater habitats of the United States. FWS/OBS-79/31, Reprinted 1992, U.S. Fish
and Wildlife Service, Washington, DC.
Dunn, J.B., Merz, D., Copenhaver, K.L., Mueller, S., 2017. Measured extent of
agricultural expansion depends on analysis technique: Ag Expansion Extent
Dependence on Analysis Technique. Biofuels, Bioprod. Biorefin. 11, 247–257.
https://doi.org/10.1002/bbb.1750.
Environmental Laboratory, 1987. Corps of Engineers Wetlands Delineation Manual (No.
Technical Report Y-87-1). U.S. Army Engineer Waterways Experiment Station,
Vicksburg, MS, USA.
Glumov, N.I., Kolomiyetz, E.I., Sergeyev, V.V., 1995. Detection of objects on the image
using a sliding window mode. Opt. Laser Technol. 27, 241–249. https://doi.org/
10.1016/0030-3992(95)93752-D.
He, K., Zhang, X., Ren, S., Sun, J., 2015. Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition.
2016 IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), p. 770-
778. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7780459.
Hensman, J., De, A.G., Matthews, G., Ghahramani, Z., 2015. Scalable Variational
Gaussian Process Classification. Proc. Mach. Learn. Res. 38, 351–360. In: http
://proceedings.mlr.press/v38/hensman15.html.
Huang, H., Chen, Y., Clinton, N., Wang, J., Wang, X., Liu, C., Gong, P., Yang, J., Bai, Y.,
Zheng, Y., Zhu, Z., 2017. Mapping major land cover dynamics in Beijing using all
Landsat images in Google Earth Engine. Remote Sens. Environ. 202, 166–176.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2017.02.021.
Illinois State Climatologist’s Office, Illinois State Water Survey, University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign. https://stateclimatologist.web.illinois.edu/data/ (accessed
9.25.21).
Illinois State Geological Survey Prairie Research Institute, Illinois Height Modernization
(ILHMP): LiDAR Data. https://clearinghouse.isgs.illinois.edu/data/elevation/illinoi
s-height-modernization-ilhmp-lidar-data (accessed 9.1.20).
Johnston, C.A., 2013. Wetland losses due to row crop expansion in the dakota prairie
pothole region. Wetlands 33, 175–182. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13157-012-0365-
x.
Katsaggelos, A.K., Smith, M., Ruiz, P., Wang, M., Dunn, J.B., 2021. WetSegNet data set.
11
International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation 105 (2021) 102581
Ketchum, D., Jencso, K., Maneta, M.P., Melton, F., Jones, M.O., Huntington, J., 2020.
IrrMapper: A machine learning approach for high resolution mapping of irrigated
agriculture across the Western U.S. Remote Sens. 12. Doi: 10.3390/rs12142328.
Kingma, D.P., Ba, J., 2014. Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization. CoRR. http://
arxiv.org/abs/1412.6980.
Kloiber, S.M., Macleod, R.D., Smith, A.J., Knight, J.F., Huberty, B.J., 2015. A Semi-
Automated, Multi-Source Data Fusion Update of a Wetland Inventory for East-
Central Minnesota, USA. Wetlands 35, 335–348. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13157-
014-0621-3.
Lark, T.J., Meghan Salmon, J., Gibbs, H.K., 2015. Cropland expansion outpaces
agricultural and biofuel policies in the United States. Environ. Res. Lett. 10 https://
doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/10/4/044003.
Liang, F., Wang, D., Liu, Y., Jiang, Y., Tang, S., 2012. Fast Pedestrian Detection Based on
Sliding Window Filtering. In: Lin, W., Xu, D., Ho, A., Wu, J., He, Y., Cai, J.,
Kankanhalli, M., Sun, M.-.-T. (Eds.), Advances in Multimedia Information Processing
– PCM 2012. Springer, Berlin Heidelberg, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp. 811–822.
Ma, L., Liu, Y., Zhang, X., Ye, Y., Yin, G., Johnson, B.A., 2019. Deep learning in remote
sensing applications: A meta-analysis and review. ISPRS J. Photogramm. Remote
Sens. 152, 166–177. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isprsjprs.2019.04.015.
Matthews, J.W., Skultety, D., Zercher, B., Ward, M.P., Benson, T.J., 2016. Field
Verification of Original and Updated National Wetlands Inventory Maps in three
Metropolitan Areas in Illinois, USA. Wetlands 36, 1155–1165. https://doi.org/
10.1007/s13157-016-0836-6.
Maxwell, A.E., Strager, M.P., Warner, T.A., Ramezan, C.A., Morgan, A.N., Pauley, C.E.,
2019. Large-Area, High Spatial Resolution Land Cover Mapping Using Random
Forests, GEOBIA, and NAIP Orthophotography: Findings and Recommendations.
Remote Sens. 11, 1409. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs11121409.
Mohlenbrock, R.H., 2014. Vascular Flora of Illinois: A Field Guide, 4th edition. Southern
Illinois University Press, Carbondale.
Naugle, D.E., Johnson, R.R., Estey, M.E., Higgins, K.F., 2000. A landscape approach to
conserving wetland bird habitat in the Prairie Pothole Region of eastern South
Dakota. Wetlands 20, 588–604. https://doi.org/10.1672/0277-5212(2000)020
[0588:ALATCW]2.0.CO;2.
Pekel, J.-F., Cottam, A., Gorelick, N., Belward, A.S., 2016. High-resolution mapping of
global surface water and its long-term changes. Nature 540, 418–422. https://doi.
org/10.1038/nature20584.
Rapinel, S., Hubert-Moy, L., Clément, B., 2015. Combined use of LiDAR data and
multispectral earth observation imagery for wetland habitat mapping. Int. J. Appl.
Earth Obs. Geoinf. 37, 56–64. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jag.2014.09.002.
Semlitsch, R.D., Bodie, J.R., 1998. Are Small, Isolated Wetlands Expendable? Conserv.
Biol. 12, 1129–1133.
Simonyan, K., Zisserman, A., 2014. Very Deep Convolutional Networks for Large-Scale
Image Recognition. arXiv preprint arXiv:1409.1556.
Snodgrass, J.W., Komoroski, M.J., Bryan, A.L., Burger, J., 2000. Relationships among
Isolated Wetland Size, Hydroperiod, and Amphibian Species Richness: Implications
for Wetland Regulations. Conserv. Biol. 14, 414–419.
Suloway, L., Hubbell, M., 1994. Wetland resources of Illinois: an analysis and atlas,
Illinois Natural History Survey Special Publication Special Report 15. Champaign, IL,
USA.
Stolt, M.H., Baker, J.C., 1995. Evaluation of national wetland inventory maps to
inventory wetlands in the southern Blue Ridge of Virginia. Wetlands 15, 346–353.
https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03160889.
United States Environmental Protection Agency, 2018. Biofuels and the Environment
Second Triennial Report to Congress.
United States Army Corps of Engineers, 2010. Regional supplement to the Corps of
Engineers wetland delineation manual: Midwest Region (Version 2.0) (No. ERDC/EL
TR-10-16). United States Army Engineer Research and Development Center,
Vicksburg, MS, USA.
United States Fish and Wildlife Service, 2020. National Wetlands Inventory.
https://www.fws.gov/wetlands/.
United States Geological Survey, 2016. National Land Cover Database.
Van Meter, K.J., Basu, N.B., 2015. Signatures of human impact: size distributions and
spatial organization of wetlands in the Prairie Pothole landscape. Ecol. Appl. 25,
451–465. https://doi.org/10.1890/14-0662.1.
Wilson, A.G., Hu, Z., Salakhutdinov, R., Xing, E.P., 2016. Stochastic Variational Deep
Kernel Learning. arXiv preprint arXiv:1409.1556.
Wolf, J., Fricker, G.A., 2013. africker/Topographic-Wetness-Index: A revised version of
the topographic wetness index written for ArcPython. https://github.com/africker
/Topographic-Wetness-Index (accessed 9.1.20).
Wright, C.K., Larson, B., Lark, T.J., Gibbs, H.K., 2017. Recent grassland losses are
concentrated around U.S. ethanol refineries. Environ. Res. Lett. 12 https://doi.org/
10.1088/1748-9326/aa6446.
Wu, Q., Lane, C.R., Li, X., Zhao, K., Zhou, Y., Clinton, N., DeVries, B., Golden, H.E.,
Lang, M.W., 2019. Integrating LiDAR data and multi-temporal aerial imagery to map
wetland inundation dynamics using Google Earth Engine. Remote Sens. Environ.
228, 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2019.04.015.
Xie, Y., Zhang, A., Welsh, W., 2015. Mapping Wetlands and Phragmites Using Publically
Available Remotely Sensed Images. Photogramm. Eng. Remote Sens. 81, 69–78.
https://doi.org/10.14358/PERS.81.1.69.
Zagoruyko, S., Komodakis, N., 2016. Wide Residual Networks. Proceedings of the British
Machine Vision Conference (BMVC) p. 87.1-87.12. BMVA Press. https://dx.doi.org/
10.5244/C.30.87.
Zedler, J.B., 2003. Wetlands at your service: reducing impacts of agriculture at the
watershed scale. Front. Ecol. Environ. 1, 65–72. https://doi.org/10.1890/1540-9295
(2003)001[0065:WAYSRI]2.0.CO;2.