Mapping salt marshes in Jamaica Bay and terrestrial vegetation in fire island national seashore using quickbird satellite data

The Fire Island National Seashore (FINS) and the Gateway National Recreation Area (NRA) are two of the protected National Parks managed by the Northeast Coastal and Barrier Network (NCBN) of the National Park Service (NPS)’s Inventory and Monitoring (I&M) Program (see Chapter 16). These two parks consist of critical coastal habitat for many rare and endangered species, and serve as migratory corridors for wildlife. They also protect vital coastal wetlands essential to water quality, fi sheries, and the biodiversity of coastal, nearshore, and terrestrial environments. In this chapter we report two case studies that applied QuickBird-2 high spatial resolution satellite remote data to map the salt marsh in the Jamaica Bay of the Gateway NRA and the terrestrial vegetation of the FINS as a step toward long-term coastal resource inventory and monitoring