Comprehensive Landsat-Based Analysis of Long-Term Surface Water Dynamics over Wetlands and Waterbodies in North America

Abstract

Wetlands are considered one of the most valuable ecosystems around the world and provide numerous environmental services, including water purification, flood protection, and habitat for a variety of species. Wetlands loss is an increasing trend due to anthropogenic activities and natural processes. As such, spatial knowledge regarding the extent and dynamics of surface water is demanding for wetland conservation and protection. The Landsat program, with five decades of historical Earth observation data, has a unique advantage for monitoring wetland surface water changes and dynamics with 30 m spatial resolution. We monitored 266 Ramsar wetland sites in North America for the past 40 years using the open-access Landsat data within the Google Earth Engine cloud computing platform. Landsat Collection 2 Level-2 surface reflectance products were preprocessed and cloud-screened, and a time series of spectral bands and indices were created. The unsupervised Dynamic Surface Water Extent method classified each image into water classes with different confidence levels. An average overall agreement of 92,97% and an average F-score of 96.31% were achieved in this study. Water occurrence maps, in addition to inundation class and change maps, were created for the entire North America, and quantified spatial information was calculated for Ramsar wetland sites.