Whiskey Island Caillou Lake Headlands restoration area – 2017 habitat map, Louisiana Barrier Island Comprehensive Monitoring Program

This package includes a detailed habitat map, general habitat map, and georeferenced imagery from 2017 for the Natural Resource Damage Assessment (NRDA) Caillou Lake Headlands project area (TE-0100), also known as Whiskey Island. The project created 170 acres of marsh habitat and 917 acres of dune and beach habitat on Whiskey Island in Terrebonne Parish using material dredged from Ship Shoal. The habitat maps are part of a suite of Whiskey Island habitat maps for the years 2012, 2015, and 2017–19, which span the time period before, during, and after the restoration project was conducted. For more information on this restoration project, see the project page on Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority’s (CPRA) Coastal Information Management System (https://cims.coastal.la.gov/outreach/projects/ProjectView?projID=TE-0100). The habitat maps developed for this effort were utilized together with ecological data in an avian analysis of habitat occupancy and use/function for several focal species pre- and post- restoration activity. The results of this analysis will help land managers evaluate how restoration and subsequent natural ecological processes impact bird species of conservation concern, and target restoration activities that enhance island sustainability and preserve avian habitat availability. The maps in this package use a detailed 15-class habitat scheme and a general eight-class habitat scheme developed by the CPRA’s Barrier Island Comprehensive Monitoring (BICM) Program. The BICM Program uses both historical data and contemporary data collections to assess and monitor changes to barrier islands. Habitat map products developed using aerial imagery and lidar elevation data are one type of BICM dataset. For more information about the BICM Program, see Kindinger and others (2013); for more information about recent BICM habitat mapping, see Enwright and others (2020). The detailed habitat scheme builds off the general scheme used in previous BICM habitat mapping efforts (Fearnley and others, 2009). The additional classes developed in the detailed scheme are primarily used to further delineate various dune habitats, separate marsh and mangrove, and distinguish between beach and unvegetated barrier flat habitats. To ensure comparability between this effort and previous BICM map products, we have crosswalked the detailed classes to general habitat classes previously used by Fearnley and others (2009). This package includes recommended symbology for BICM detailed habitat classes and BICM general habitat classes with and without outlines.