The Illinois River's Emiquon and Spunky Bottoms Preserves are collaborative floodplain restoration projects involving The Nature Conservancy (TNC), The US Army Corps of Engineers, and the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), with restoration efforts guided by a team of over forty science advisers. Emiquon and Spunky Bottoms were historic wetlands prior to conversion to farmland. This project is slowly converting these farm fields back to wetlands designed to increase fish diversity and food source production for migrating waterfowl.
To track how these restoration efforts affect the landscape, digital aerial imagery has been collected in early September every year since 2013. TNC also uses this imagery to develop land cover/land use datasets to quantify how the landscape is changing.
- Overview
The Illinois River's Emiquon and Spunky Bottoms Preserves are collaborative floodplain restoration projects involving The Nature Conservancy (TNC), The US Army Corps of Engineers, and the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), with restoration efforts guided by a team of over forty science advisers. Emiquon and Spunky Bottoms were historic wetlands prior to conversion to farmland. This project is slowly converting these farm fields back to wetlands designed to increase fish diversity and food source production for migrating waterfowl.
To track how these restoration efforts affect the landscape, digital aerial imagery has been collected in early September every year since 2013. TNC also uses this imagery to develop land cover/land use datasets to quantify how the landscape is changing.
Sources/Usage: Public Domain.Color infrared aerial image mosaics of the Illinois River’s Emiquon and Spunky Bottoms Preserves collected at 6”/pixel resolution on September 14, 2018. Background image is a USGS topographic map.