Various federal, state or local agencies during the process of resource permitting
commonly perform environmental evaluation of wetlands. Wetland Rapid Assessment Procedure (WRAP)
is a methodology developed by South Florida Water Management District to assist in the regulatory
evaluation of wetland sites in the state of Florida. (Miller and Gunsalus 1997).
WRAP consists of a standardized matrix of six variables that are used to evaluate the current
wetland conditions by establishing a numerical ranking for individual ecological and anthropogenic
factor. These factors include wildlife utilization, wetland overstory/shrub canopy, wetland vegetative
ground cover adjacent upland support/wetland buffer, field indicators of wetland hydrology and water
quality input and treatment systems. The numerical output for the variables evaluates the
wetland condition.
Evaluation of wetland site requires office preparation as well as the field investigation.
It is the purpose of this paper to describe a GIS application using ArcView that is
designed to assist with WRAP office component both prior and after on-site wetland evaluation.