Mapping 57,000 Acres of Lake Superior Estuary
In partnership with Minnesota Homeland Security and Emergency Management, U-Spatial builds interactive Hazard Mitigation Plans for Minnesota's counties, tribal nations and state agencies. Delivered through ArcGIS Hub sites, this first-in-the-nation digital model turns static reports into accessible, actionable hazard data.
A New Map for a Changing Estuary
The lower 21 miles of the St. Louis River form a large freshwater estuary where it empties into Lake Superior. It's a landscape of wetlands and uplands that has been the focus of habitat conservation efforts since a 2002 Habitat Plan first laid out a vision for its restoration. That plan is now overdue for an update, and updating it required something the region didn't have: a current, detailed, and reproducible map of the estuary's habitat.
U-Spatial joined a team spanning the Lake Superior National Estuarine Research Reserve, the Wisconsin State Cartographer's Office, and the University of Minnesota Duluth's Natural Resources Research Institute to build one. Funded by NOAA's National Estuarine Research Reserve System (NERRS) Science Collaborative, the 18-month project mapped 57,000 acres of wetlands and adjacent uplands within a mile of the river's lower 21 miles, below the Fond du Lac dam — directly supporting the St. Louis River Habitat Workgroup, the coalition of agencies, local governments, and community members responsible for updating the 2002 plan.
How It Works
Rather than manually digitizing the new map, as the 2002 version had been, the team built a novel image segmentation approach for land cover classification, applying machine learning classifiers to freely available, non-proprietary imagery. U-Spatial's contribution centered on this modeling work: using high-resolution NAIP aerial imagery, the team trained a deep learning model to identify and classify habitat types across the project area, with the heavy computational work carried out on MSI's Agate supercomputing cluster.
Because the method relies on open data and a documented, repeatable process, it isn't a one-time snapshot. It's designed to be redeployed at regular intervals to track how the estuary's habitat changes over time, and adapted for use in other estuaries facing the same mapping challenge.
Informing the Next Habitat Plan
Alongside the new habitat map, the project produced a change analysis report comparing the results to the estuary's 2002 map, the first update to that baseline in over two decades. That comparison gives the St. Louis River Habitat Workgroup a clear picture of where habitat has shifted, information that will directly shape the restoration, enhancement, and protection priorities in the updated Habitat Plan for the lower St. Louis River and its watershed in northeastern Minnesota and northwestern Wisconsin.
View the Habitat Map
The project's primary output is a detailed habitat map covering the wetlands and adjacent uplands along the lower St. Louis River. It is publicly available as a map graphic, with the underlying data and change-analysis report available on request.
The Project by the Numbers
A snapshot of the project's scope and impact.
57,000
Acres of wetland and upland habitat mapped
21 Miles
Of the lower St. Louis River covered by the project
18 Months
From project start to a completed, reproducible habitat map
20+ Years
Of habitat change analyzed against the estuary's 2002 baseline map
Meet the Experts
