The East-West Gateway Map of the Month for December highlights the most recent National Wetlands Inventory for the East-West Gateway region. These data depict: the lakes (36.12 square miles), riverine (103.97 square miles), freshwater ponds (35.41 square miles), freshwater emergent wetlands (37.26 square miles) and freshwater forested/shrub wetlands (153.37 square miles) of the EWG region. These data are the result of over 45 years of collaborative work among over 165 state agencies, federal agencies, tribal governments, regional and local governments and nonprofit organizations. The data provide users with information to inform a variety of applications, including infrastructure development projects, habitat assessments, climate change resilience planning, species status assessments, wetland restoration, invasive species assessments and more.
St. Charles County has 12.95 square miles of freshwater emergent wetlands and 16.84 square miles of lakes, the most in both categories in the EWG region. St. Clair County has the most freshwater forested/shrub wetlands with 38.18 square miles. The city of St. Louis has the fewest square miles of wetlands among the eight counties in the EWG region. More information on this data can be found at the National Wetlands Inventory website: https://www.fws.gov/program/national-wetlands-inventory.