Abstract
Abstract Wetlands are a key habitat within the Mediterranean biodiversity hotspot and provide important ecosystem services for human well-being. Remote sensing (RS) has significantly boosted our ability to monitor changes in Mediterranean wetlands, especially in areas where little information is being collected. However, its application to wetlands has sometimes been flawed with uncertainties and unrecognized errors, to a large extent due to the inherent and specific ecological characteristics of Mediterranean wetlands. We present here an overview of the state of the art on RS techniques for mapping and monitoring Mediterranean wetlands, and the remaining challenges: delineating and separating wetland habitat types; mapping water dynamics inside wetlands; and detecting actual wetland trends over time in a context of high, natural variability. The most important lessons learned are that ecologists’ knowledge need to be integrated with RS expertise to achieve a valuable monitoring approach of these ecosystems.
Highlights
THE CHALLENGES OF MONITORING WETLANDS STATUS AND TRENDS WITH REMOTE SENSING (RS) DATAMediterranean wetlands are part of a global biodiversity hotspot, hosting many endemic species (e.g. Darwall et al, 2014)
Another approach that is useful to document habitat transformation consists of using the Earth Observation Data for Habitat Monitoring (EODHaM) system developed by Lucas et al (2015)
We present an analysis of the Mediterranean Wetlands Observatory in which we quantified the errors of the habitats mapped in the GlobWetland-II project
Summary
THE CHALLENGES OF MONITORING WETLANDS STATUS AND TRENDS WITH REMOTE SENSING (RS) DATA. All technical improvements will potentially allow us to better distinguish different wetland habitats This is a moment where progress already made can be lost as new RS tools and new mapping nomenclatures have to be developed for the new satellite data. Rice paddies, artificial wetlands, irregular precipitations, all occur across the globe, and our Mediterranean review should be seen as a regional case study with lessons that are applicable globally. We use this overview to raise awareness of the challenges of using RS to monitor wetland habitats, some of which have still to be embraced.
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