Many of the wetlands within Summit County are small and isolated. These wetlands are typically under two acres in size and may have saturated soils for portions of the growing season and little or no standing water. This type of wetlands is common within young forested areas, brushy areas, and abandoned farmland. Somewhat poorly drained soils on nearly level topography are particularly conducive to this type of wetlands. These isolated wetlands are extremely difficult to identify on aerial photographs and account for most of the wetlands not identified in this study. These wetlands are found throughout the county, but are more numerous in the north.
This study cannot be used as a wetlands delineation for land development. A wetlands delineation is a field study which involves sampling of soils, hydrology, and vegetation, as well as surveying of wetlands boundaries. A wetlands delineation is necessary if development will occur on any parcel that is suspected as having wetlands.
Wetlands were delineated from the hard copy maps. The Summit County Soil Survey and National Wetlands Inventory maps were also consulted as wetlands were identified. The wetlands data were soft copy digitized in ArcView 3.3 to create the wetlands shapefile. Area and perimeter data were calculated using the ArcView "calculate geometry" script. Acreage data was then added to the attributes from the area calculated.