Salt marshes of the northeastern United States are dynamic landscapes that provide significant ecosystem services to humans across the coast and provide critical habitat to wildlife. These coastal marshes can be separated into several distinct vegetation communities including high and low marsh, which vary in elevation, salinity, and frequency of inundation. Understanding and mapping these vegetation zones is important for regional conservation of habitat for tidal marsh wildlife as well as for tracking the effects of environmental and anthropogenic change on coastal marshes. Remote sensing of these habitats has, until now, been difficult across large spatial scales due to spectral similarities between marsh grass species and the difficulty in remotely sensing a coastal ecosystem across different tidal stages.

This gallery contains Tidal Marsh Vegetation Classification layers describing six vegetation cover types and two bordering cover types found within coastal marsh areas from Maine to Virginia, USA. This layer is the first of its kind to map tidal marsh vegetation communities at this regional extent. The spatial layers are provided at a 3m resolution using 2014-2015 imagery from the National Agriculture Imagery Program (NAIP) and elevation data from the National Elevation Dataset (NED). The layers describe the following cover types: 1. High marsh 2. Low marsh 3. Salt pools/pannes 4. Terrestrial border 5. Phragmites australis 6. Mudflat 7. Open Water and 8. Upland.

Three types of data are provided: