A New Conceptual Framework for Integrating Earth Observation in Large-scale Wetland Management in East Africa

Adrian Strauch,Konrad Hentze,Natalie Cornish,Jonas Franke,Andrew Nelson,Frank Thonfeld,Sander J. Zwart,Stefanie Steinbach

doi:10.1007/s13157-021-01468-9

Abstract

Wetlands are abundant across the African continent and provide a range of ecosystem services on different scales but are threatened by overuse and degradation. It is essential that national governments enable and ensure the sustainable use of wetland resources to maintain these services in the long run. As informed management decisions require reliable, up-to-date, and large coverage spatial data, we propose a modular Earth observation-based framework for the geo-localisation and characterization of wetlands in East Africa. In this study, we identify four major challenges in spatial data supported wetland management and present a framework to address them. We then apply the framework comprising Wetland Delineation, Surface Water Occurrence, Land Use/Land Cover classification and Wetland Use Intensity for the whole of Rwanda and evaluate the ability of these layers to meet the identified challenges. The layers’ spatial and temporal characteristics make them combinable and the information content, of each layer alone as well as in combination, renders them useful for different wetland management contexts.

Highlights

African wetland landscapes provide a range of ecosystem services, such as water provision, food provision, and climate regulation (Langan et al 2018)
With major water bodies derived from the Global Lakes and Wetlands Database (GLWD) Level-1 data (Lehner and Döll 2004) excluded, it is 14.3 % of Rwanda’s area
The percentage overlap was highest for the large water bodies in tiles 4 and 5, whereas it was lowest for the narrow wetlands and water bodies in tiles 1 and 3, the accuracy of surface water detection in tile 3 was as high as 79.7 %

Summary

Introduction

African wetland landscapes provide a range of ecosystem services, such as water provision, food provision, and climate regulation (Langan et al 2018). Inappropriate agricultural use is a major threat to wetlands and, among other impacts, has already caused tremendous losses of wetland area in Africa (Chapman et al 2001; Junk et al 2013; Mitchell 2013; Darrah et al 2019). This is detrimental to livelihoods in SSA, where local populations often directly depend on wetland ecosystem services (Nabahungu and Visser 2011; Namaalwa et al 2013)

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion