2014 Land Cover Land Use Horseshoe Bend

This collection of conservation areas consists of the floodplain of the combined streams of the Iowa River and the Cedar River. The study area begins just southeast of Wapello, IA, and continues southeast until the Horseshoe Bend Division, Port Louisa NWR. The area is currently managed to maintain meadow or grassland habitat which requires intensive management due to vegetative succession. In addition, this floodplain area contains a high proportion of managed lands and private lands in the Wetland Reserve Program and is a high priority area for cooperative conservation actions. This project provides a late-summer baseline vegetation inventory to assess future management actions in an adaptive process. Changes in levees, in addition to increased water flows and flood events due to climate change and land use practices, make restoration of floodplain processes more complex. Predictive models could help determine more efficient and effective restoration and management techniques. Successful GIS tools developed for this project would be applicable to other floodplain refuges and conservation areas.