The coastal plains of North Carolina and Virginia are covered by an extensive network of drainage ditches. Built decades ago to support farming and forestry, these ditches now pose serious challenges for ecosystems and communities. They dry out peat wetlands—making them more likely to catch fire and release air pollutants as well as greenhouse gases—and speed up the flow of pollutants into estuaries. Ditches can also accelerate saltwater intrusion into forests and croplands, threatening wildlife habitat and reducing agricultural productivity.
Restoring drained lands can reverse some of these impacts—and large-scale restoration projects are underway. Good maps are essential to achieving the greatest impact with these efforts, but existing ditch maps are outdated and incomplete, especially when it comes to smaller ditches.
To help fill this gap, the Nature Activation Hub team at the Nicholas Institute is leading a project to develop high-resolution, up-to-date ditch maps using a combination of existing lidar data and new drone-based lidar. The team is also testing how well these data can capture ditch size and shape. The resulting maps will support restoration planning—including work led by the Atlantic Conservation Coalition—and help identify peatlands in need of repair and areas vulnerable to saltwater intrusion.
This work is funded through the Albemarle-Pamlico National Estuary Program and carried out in partnership with the Duke Marine Robotics and Remote Sensing Lab and The Nature Conservancy.
