Comparative analysis of information products of land cover types
 of high spatial resolution in mapping floodplain landscapes

Abstract

Intrazonal floodplain landscapes in the southern Russia remain relatively unaffected by the direct impact of anthropogenic activity, while zonal steppe landscapes are almost completely plowed, and semi-desert and desert are subject to high pasture loads. At the same time, climatic changes and the regulation of river flow by hydroelectric dams lead to the redistribution of river flow, which leads to the degradation of floodplain ecosystems due to a decrease in the duration and height of the flood. The construction of hydraulic structures, including shafts, dams, and arrays of irrigated lands, contributes to the withdrawal of significant areas from the floodplain regime. Reducing the duration of high water and the areas of flooding during them entails an increase in the mineralization of groundwater and stabilization of their level, which negatively affects natural floodplain ecosystems. Similar trends of hydrological and climatic changes are characteristic of floodplain landscapes of rivers in the zone of insufficient moisture, for example, the Don and its tributaries, the Volga in its lower reaches, the rivers of Central Asia. For these reasons, it is important to monitor the condition of floodplain landscapes, one of the tools of which is mapping based on remote sensing data. The purpose of this work is to map the types of land cover of floodplain landscapes of the Lower Volga on the basis of thematic information products ESA GlobCover, ESRI WorldCover, FROM-GLC10 with a spatial resolution of 10 m and GlobCover30 (GLC30) with a resolution of 30 m. It has been established that the actual area of wetlands regularly flooded during floods is 48% of the area of the entire territory. The most accurate estimates of the areas of wetlands, reservoirs, meadows and forests were obtained from the data of the ESA GlobCover information product, which is associated with the use of not only Sentinel-2 optical satellite images, but also Sentinel-1 radar. ESA data is recommended for analyzing the state of floodplain landscapes in the zone of insufficient moisture.