Transferring Lake Superior NERR Habitat Mapping Tools and Methods to the Wisconsin-Minnesota St. Louis River Estuary - NERRS/NSC(NERRS Science Collaborative)

This science transfer project used a multi-phase approach that included deep learning techniques and geospatial rules to create a habitat map of the St. Louis River estuary.

The Project
The St. Louis River estuary, which runs along the boundary between Wisconsin and Minnesota in the Duluth-Superior metro area, is a vital resource ecologically, culturally, and economically. The St. Louis River is the largest U.S. tributary to Lake Superior and the second largest tributary in the Lake Superior watershed. In 1987, the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement designated the 12,000-acre freshwater estuary a Great Lakes Area of Concern because legacy contaminants and disturbances had led to nine key impairments, including loss of fish and wildlife habitat.

This project addressed a need identified by the St. Louis River Habitat Workgroup to better understand current conditions to support the identification and prioritization of areas for future restoration and conservation. The project approach included the transfer of a repeatable habitat mapping process developed by the Lake Superior Reserve and partners to a larger area encompassing 57,000 acres of wetlands and adjacent uplands spanning the lower twenty-one miles of the St. Louis River below the Fond du Lac dam. The team applied accessible image classification methods-including use of common machine learning classifiers and freely available, non-proprietary data-to create a reproducible approach that could be adopted in other locations and redeployed at regular intervals to illuminate change over time. In addition to the habitat map and reproducible workflow, the team also produced a change analysis report comparing the 2024 habitat map to the previous St. Louis River Estuary map from 2002.