Abstract
We generated a map of wetlands in Argentina from the digital edition of the National Soil Inventory made by the National Institute of Agricultural Technology (Instituto Nacional de Tecnologia Agropecuaria, INTA). Potential wetland areas were extracted from the map after an exhaustive analysis of the database and reassignment of the soil classes, by taking into account 1) soil taxonomic classes; 2) constraining factors (waterlogging, flooding, drainage impairment); and 3) cartographic categories, including lakes, lagoons, marshes and salt lakes. Estimated wetland area is about 600,000 km 2 , representing 21.5% of the national territory; it increases to 23% when considering salt lakes and deepwater bodies, but their surface is underestimated in the INTA database. Finally, we analyzed the distribution and abundance of wetland areas from different eco-regions of Argentina, and compared our results with current global wetland databases.
Highlights
The term wetland embraces a wide variety of environments, including fluvial forests, marshes, swamps and bogs, among others
This inventory had been obtained from a soil survey performed at provincial level by the National Institute of Agricultural Technology (Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria, INTA) at scale 1:250,000 (INTA, 1995)
The percentage of agreement was only 10.2% for wetland areas, and 88.28% of the areas indicated in the map as wetlands were annotated as nonwetlands in GLWD-3
Summary
The term wetland embraces a wide variety of environments, including fluvial forests, marshes, swamps and bogs, among others. In Argentina, wetlands cover a large surface area and include a broad range of types (Canevari et al, 1998; Malvárez, 1999; Malvárez and Bó, 2004; Blanco and De La Balze, 2004). Until a few decades ago, most wetlands were undisturbed by human activities (except for those in urban areas), such as water use for irrigation, dam building, drainage for agriculture or peat extraction. This situation contrasts with other parts of the world, in temperate regions, where these and other practices have reduced wetland
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