We just added National Wetlands Inventory screening to Groundcheck. Every report now checks the property against public wetland and water feature mapping from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Wetlands can affect buildable area, road access, utility routes, stormwater design, permitting, project timing, and the amount of investigation required before development. Finding a possible wetland early gives you time to ask better questions before you rely on a site plan or purchase assumption.
What Groundcheck checks
Groundcheck looks for National Wetlands Inventory features that intersect the parcel polygon. When no parcel boundary is available, it uses an approximate 30 meter buffer around the saved address point.
For each returned feature, Groundcheck records available wetland type, acreage, system, subsystem, class, subclass, water regime, and NWI classification code. The report also links to the public source.
How the finding helps you
When the layer returns a mapped wetland, deepwater, riverine, lake, or pond feature, Groundcheck treats it as a high screening concern. Other mapped water related features receive a moderate result. No returned intersection produces a low screening result.
The useful question is not only whether a feature exists. You also need to understand where it sits, how much of the parcel it affects, and whether it conflicts with access, buildings, septic areas, utilities, or stormwater facilities.
- Compare the mapped feature with the area you expect to disturb.
- Ask whether federal, state, or local wetland rules and buffers apply.
- Determine whether a qualified wetland professional should visit the site.
- Check streams, soils, drainage patterns, and recent aerial imagery for supporting clues.
Why we added it
Wetland research often requires a separate government map and knowledge of classification codes. Groundcheck brings that check into the same report as parcel, floodplain, soils, slope, environmental, and road information.
The result helps you spot a major due diligence question while the property is still in the early comparison stage.
A mapped wetland is not a delineation
The National Wetlands Inventory is a screening dataset. It does not establish a regulatory boundary, and it does not prove that an unmapped area has no wetlands. Mapping can be approximate, incomplete, or different from current field conditions.
Use the Groundcheck finding to decide what to investigate. Rely on the responsible agencies and qualified professionals for jurisdictional decisions, field delineation, buffers, and permits.
Use the new layer
Check the property you are considering
Groundcheck combines this source with parcel details and other available national, state, and local layers.
Start a property check See every Groundcheck data layerGroundcheck provides early public data screening, not a legal, engineering, surveying, environmental, planning, permitting, or buildability determination. Verify important findings with the responsible agencies and qualified professionals.