A Partnership to promote, harmonize and support global and national scale mapping and inventory for assessment and monitoring of wetlands in support of the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands and other bio-diversity related conventions.

Lucilla Spini, Robert R Christian, Nicholas Davidson, Colin Finlayson, John Latham, Robert Zomer

    Research output: Book chapter/Published conference paperChapter

    Abstract

    Earth Observation sources and techniques should be made known and be applied to advance the wetland mapping efforts. The present manual is a contribution to this end.In the last few decades there has been a greater awareness of wetland values and benefits to society. At the same time wetland areas are under increasing pressure from development. The Millennium Eco-system Assessment (2005) emphasized that loss of wetlands globally is more rapid than those of any other ecosystem (Agardy and Alder, 2005; Finlayson and D'Cruz, 2005). Therefore, contemporary information which documents the abundance, distribution and condition of wetlands is absolutely essential. Recently there has been a dramatic advance in both spatial resolution and availability of Earth Observation (EO) data with the potential for wide application in the field of wetland monitoring and mapping. EO provides improved thematic and geographical accuracy, high revisiting capability and data consistency, all in a cost effective manner. To this end EO is nowadays increasingly used for wetland mapping, and consequently in assessment and monitoring activities. At the same time, advanced image processing techniques have been developed and tailored specifically for wetland and habitat mapping in order to process data from raw to higher levels producing added-value maps and to provide frequently updated baseline and trend information. Wetland mapping has been promoted by the MedWet inventory methodology from the first stage of its development, including: the MedWet Habitat Description System (Farinha et al, 1996) which provides an hierarchical nomenclature for wetland habitats easily interpreted through remote sensing; the Photointerpretation and Cartographic Conventions (Zalidis et al, 1996) which provide conventions on the use of aerial photography and on the production of wetland habitat maps; and the criteria that define a wetland and its terrestrial boundaries on the basis of the presence or absence of essential hydrological, soil and vegetation attributes (Zalidis et al, 1996: in Costa et al, 2006). Clearly, the new technological achievements derived from
    Original languageEnglish
    Title of host publicationInventory, assessment and monitoring of Mediterranean Wetlands
    Subtitle of host publicationMapping wetlands using Earth Observation techniques.
    EditorsElini Fitoka, Iphigenia Keramitsoglou
    Place of PublicationGreece
    PublisherMedWet Publication
    Pages28-30
    Number of pages3
    EditionPart 1.5
    ISBN (Print)9789606858062
    Publication statusPublished - 2008

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