Abstract
Abstract. Operational monitoring of complex vegetation communities, such as the ones growing in coastal and wetland areas, can be effectively supported by satellite remote sensing, providing quantitative spatialized information on vegetation parameters, as well as on their temporal evolution. With this work, we explored and evaluated the potential of Sentinel-2 data for assessing the status and evolution of coastal vegetation as the primary indicator of ecosystem conditions, by mapping the different plant communities of Venice lagoon (Northeast Italy) via a rule-based classification approach exploiting synoptic seasonal features of spectral indices and multispectral reflectance. The results demonstrated that coastal and wetland vegetation community type maps derived for two different years scored a good overall accuracy around 80%, with some misclassification in the coastal areas and overestimation of salt marsh communities coverage, and that virtual collaborative environments can facilitate the use of Sentinel-2 data and products to multidisciplinary users.
Highlights
Coastal lagoons and wetlands are natural environments of great ecological and functional value, and are subject to numerous pressures of natural and anthropogenic origin
Monitoring coastal and wetland vegetation requires a multidisciplinary approach, that satellite remote sensing can support by providing quantitative information on vegetation features and dynamics (Ozesmi and Bauer, 2002, Adam et al, 2010; Klemas, 2013)
The salt marshes are dominated by different halophytic species (e.g. Spartina maritima, Suaeda maritima, Salicornia fruticosa), while marginal freshwater sectors are dominated by herbaceous helophytes, in particular Phragmites australis, with Juncus maritimus as dominant species at intermediate conditions
Summary
Coastal lagoons and wetlands are natural environments of great ecological and functional value, and are subject to numerous pressures of natural and anthropogenic origin. Because of their high dynamism, these ecosystems need frequent monitoring, in particular dealing with vegetation cover and diversity. Approaches based on spectral indices derived from midresolution multispectral satellite data as input (e.g. Landsat series) have been successfully used for different applications covering terrestrial and aquatic vegetation groups in freshwater and brackish systems, such as mapping cover and distinguishing plant community types (Davranche et al, 2010, Villa et al, 2015), assessing their functional status (Dronova et al, 2012; Villa et al, 2013; Hestir et al, 2015), assessing the impact of natural hazards (Villa et al, 2012), and monitoring tidal wetlands (Ozesmi and Bauer, 2002; Ghosh et al, 2016). Sentinel-2 constellation is a step forward in terms of spatial (10 m resolution), spectral (13 spectral bands) and temporal (5 days revisiting time) coverage capabilities required for effective, operational monitoring of coastal ecosystems, in terms of reliability (i.e. thematic accuracy) and information content (i.e. semantic classification level) compared to what has been so far operationally feasible
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
