The scope of this project begins with the development of a multi-resolution digital database for characterization of Green Bay, Wisconsin and Saginaw Bay, Michigan utilizing a multistage remote sensing approach. The remotely sensed data collected June 1991 is from a combination of sensors aboard satellite and aircraft platforms. These data will be integrated with available bathymetry, elevation, and updated USGS National Wetland Inventory (NWI) data into a geographic information system (GIS). Once compiled, the GIS will be evaluated by several federal and state agencies for usefulness in regulatory programs, habitat inventories, watershed analyses, and environmental monitoring programs. The pilot GIS will also be utilized to develop a sampling frame(s) for freshwater ecosystem process studies in Green Bay (FY92) and for Saginaw Bay (FY93). The ecological process studies will focus on origin-transport-fate modeling scenarios by integrating information collected from remote sensing, in-situ measurements, and existing digital data. Freshwater systems are influenced by terrestrial upstream processes in the watershed through hydrologic events/processes. Water, sediments, and dissolved nutrients are transported from the terrestrial ecosystems (origin) to the freshwater system (fate). The "fate" issue becomes more complex with factors such as wind speed and direction, air temperature, water temperature, wave height, etc. all playing a role in circulation and mixing patterns.