Wetlands Insight Tool: Characterising the Surface Water and Vegetation Cover Dynamics of Individual Wetlands Using Multidecadal Landsat Satellite Data

Wetlands around the world provide crucial ecosystem services and are under increasing pressure from multiple sources including climate change, changing flow and flooding regimes, and encroaching human populations. The Landsat satellite imagery archive provides a unique observational record of how wetlands have responded to these impacts during the last three decades. Information stored within this archive has historically been difficult to access due to its petabyte-scale and the challenges in converting Earth observation data into biophysical measurements that can be interpreted by wetland ecologists and catchment managers. This paper introduces the Wetlands Insight Tool (WIT), a workflow that generates WIT plots that present a multidecadal view of the biophysical cover types contained within individual Australian wetlands. The WIT workflow summarises Earth observation data over 35 years at 30 m resolution within a user-defined wetland boundary to produce a time-series plot (WIT plot) of the percentage of the wetland covered by open water, areas of water mixed with vegetation (‘wet’), green vegetation, dry vegetation, and bare soil. We compare these WIT plots with documented changes that have occurred in floodplain shrublands, alpine peat wetlands, and lacustrine and palustrine wetlands, demonstrating the power of satellite observations to supplement ground-based data collection in a diverse range of wetland types. The use of WIT plots to observe and manage wetlands enables improved evidence-based decision making.


<b>Citation:</b>

Dunn, B., Ai, E., Alger, M.J. et al. Wetlands Insight Tool: Characterising the Surface Water and Vegetation Cover Dynamics of Individual Wetlands Using Multidecadal Landsat Satellite Data. <i>Wetlands</i><b> 43</b>, 37 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13157-023-01682-7

Simple

Identification info

Date (Publication)
2023-05-14
Date (Revision)
2023-06-06T00:11:35
Citation identifier
Geoscience Australia Persistent Identifier/https://pid.geoscience.gov.au/dataset/ga/146140

Identifier

Codespace

Digital Object Identifier

Cited responsible party
Role Organisation / Individual Name Details
Author

Dunn, B.

 Space Division Internal Contact
Author

Ai, E.

 Space Division Internal Contact
Author

Alger, M.

 External Contact
Author

Fanson, B.

 External Contact
Author

Fickas, K.

 External Contact
Author

Krause, C.

 Space Division Internal Contact
Author

Lymburner, L.

 Space Division Internal Contact
Author

Nanson, R.

 Place and Communities Internal Contact
Author

Papas, P.

 External Contact
Author

Ronan, M.

 External Contact
Author

Thomas, R.

 External Contact
Publisher

Springer Nature: Wetlands

 External Contact
Issue identification

43 Article 37

Purpose

Journal Article submitted to Wetlands Journal

Status
Completed
Point of contact
Role Organisation / Individual Name Details
Point of contact

Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia)

 Voice
Point of contact

Dunn, B.

 Space Division Internal Contact
Resource provider

Space Division

 External Contact
Spatial representation type

Spatial resolution

Level of detail

30 m

Topic category
  • Geoscientific information

Extent

Temporal extent

Time period
1987-01-01 2021-04-24

Extent

N
S
E
W


Maintenance and update frequency
Not planned

Resource format

Title

Product data repository: Various Formats

Website

Data Store directory containing the digital product files

Data Store directory containing one or more files, possibly in a variety of formats, accessible to Geoscience Australia staff only for internal purposes

theme.ANZRC Fields of Research.rdf

  • ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES

  • EARTH SCIENCES

ANZLIC Geographic Extent Name Register

  • AUSTRALIA EXCLUDING EXTERNAL TERRITORIES

theme.ANZRC Fields of Research.rdf

  • Surfacewater Hydrology

  • Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing

  • EARTH SCIENCES

GCMD Keywords

  • Earth Science | Biosphere | Aquatic Ecosystems | Wetlands | Lacustrine Wetlands

  • Earth Science | Biosphere | Aquatic Ecosystems | Wetlands

  • Earth Science | Biosphere | Aquatic Ecosystems | Wetlands | Peatlands

  • Earth Science | Biosphere | Aquatic Ecosystems | Wetlands | Palustrine Wetlands

Keywords

  • wetland characterisation

Keywords

  • Landsat

Keywords

  • Earth observation

Keywords

  • Australia

Keywords

  • Hydroperiod

Keywords

  • Hydrological regime

Keywords

  • Published_External

Resource constraints

Title

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence

Alternate title

CC-BY

Edition

4.0

Website

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/

Access constraints
License
Use constraints
License
Other constraints

© Crown 2023

Resource constraints

Title

Australian Government Security ClassificationSystem

Edition date
2018-11-01T00:00:00
Website

https://www.protectivesecurity.gov.au/Pages/default.aspx

Classification
Unclassified
Language
English
Character encoding
UTF8

Distribution Information

Distributor contact
Role Organisation / Individual Name Details
Distributor

Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia)

 Voice facsimile
OnLine resource

Link to Journal

Link to Journal

Distribution format

Resource lineage

Statement

The product uses the following Geoscience Australia Digital Earth Australia program input datasets:

DEA Water Observations (Landsat)

DEA Fractional Cover (Landsat)

DEA Surface Reflectance NBART (Landsat)

Reference System Information

Reference system identifier
EPSG/GDA94 / Australian Albers (EPSG:3577)

Metadata constraints

Title

Australian Government Security Classification System

Edition date
2018-11-01T00:00:00
Website

https://www.protectivesecurity.gov.au/Pages/default.aspx

Classification
Unclassified

Metadata

Metadata identifier
urn:uuid/ec0f08a7-2d82-4da0-ac35-84eeea61c580

Title

GeoNetwork UUID

Language
English
Character encoding
UTF8
Contact
Role Organisation / Individual Name Details
Point of contact

Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia)

 Voice
Owner

Dunn, B

 Internal Contact
Point of contact

Dunn, B.

 Space Division Internal Contact

Type of resource

Resource scope
Document
Name

Journal Articles and Conference Papers

Alternative metadata reference

Title

Geoscience Australia - short identifier for metadata record with

uuid

Citation identifier
eCatId/146140

Metadata linkage

https://ecat.ga.gov.au/geonetwork/srv/eng/catalog.search#/metadata/5167d912-6784-4371-9938-3931e84ca6f1

Metadata linkage

https://ecat.ga.gov.au/geonetwork/srv/eng/catalog.search#/metadata/ec0f08a7-2d82-4da0-ac35-84eeea61c580

Date info (Creation)
2019-04-08T01:55:29
Date info (Revision)
2019-04-08T01:55:29

Metadata standard

Title

AU/NZS ISO 19115-1:2014

Metadata standard

Title

ISO 19115-1:2014

Metadata standard

Title

ISO 19115-3

Title

Geoscience Australia Community Metadata Profile of ISO 19115-1:2014

Edition

Version 2.0, September 2018

Citation identifier
https://pid.geoscience.gov.au/dataset/ga/122551

 
 

Spatial extent

N
S
E
W


Keywords

Australia Earth observation Hydrological regime Hydroperiod Landsat wetland characterisation
GCMD Keywords
Earth Science | Biosphere | Aquatic Ecosystems | Wetlands Earth Science | Biosphere | Aquatic Ecosystems | Wetlands | Lacustrine Wetlands Earth Science | Biosphere | Aquatic Ecosystems | Wetlands | Palustrine Wetlands Earth Science | Biosphere | Aquatic Ecosystems | Wetlands | Peatlands
theme.ANZRC Fields of Research.rdf
EARTH SCIENCES EARTH SCIENCES ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing Surfacewater Hydrology

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