Up to date information about the extent and location of surface water provides all Australians with a common understanding of this valuable and increasingly scarce resource. Digital Earth Australia (DEA) Waterbodies shows the wet surface area of waterbodies as estimated from satellites. It does not show depth, volume, purpose of the waterbody, nor the source of the water. DEA Waterbodies uses Geoscience Australia’s archive of over 30 years of Landsat satellite imagery to identify where over 300,000 waterbodies are in the Australian landscape and tells us the wet surface area within those waterbodies. It supports users to understand and manage water across Australia. For example, users can gain insights into the severity and spatial distribution of drought or identify potential water sources for aerial firefighting. The tool uses a water classification for every available Landsat satellite image and maps the locations of waterbodies across Australia. It provides a timeseries of wet surface area for waterbodies that are present more than 10% of the time and are larger than 2700m2 (3 Landsat pixels). The tool indicates changes in the wet surface area of waterbodies. This can be used to identify when waterbodies are increasing or decreasing in wet surface area. More information on using this dataset can be accessed on the DEA Knowledge Hub at <a href="https://docs.dea.ga.gov.au/data/product/dea-waterbodies-landsat/?tab=overview">https://docs.dea.ga.gov.au/data/product/dea-waterbodies-landsat/?tab=overview</a>. Refer to the research paper Krause et al. 2021 for additional details: <a href="https://doi.org/10.3390/rs13081437">https://doi.org/10.3390/rs13081437</a> The update from version 2 to version 3.0 of the DEA Waterbodies product and service was created through a collaboration between Geoscience Australia, the National Aerial Firefighting Centre, Natural Hazards Research Australia, and FrontierSI to make the product more useful in hazard applications. Geoscience Australia, the National Aerial Firefighting Centre, Natural Hazards Research Australia, and FrontierSI advise that the information published by this service comprises general statements based on scientific research. The reader is advised and needs to be aware that such information may be incomplete or unable to be used in any specific situation. No reliance or actions must therefore be made on that information without seeking prior expert professional, scientific and technical advice. To the extent permitted by law, FrontierSI, Geoscience Australia, the National Aerial Firefighting Centre and Natural Hazards Research Australia (including its employees and consultants) are excluded from all liability to any person for any consequences, including but not limited to all losses, damages, costs, expenses and any other compensation, arising directly or indirectly from using this publication (in part or in whole) and any information or material contained in it.

Background Wetlands provide a wide range of ecosystem services including improving water quality, carbon sequestration, as well as providing habitat for fish, amphibians, reptiles and birds. Managing wetlands in Australia is challenging due to competing pressures for water availability and highly variable climatic settings. The Wetlands Insight Tool (Ramsar Wetlands) has been developed to provide catchment managers, environmental water holders, andwetlands scientists a consistent historical baseline of wetlands dynamics from 1987 onwards. The Wetlands Insight Tool (Ramsar Wetlands) is available online through the DEA Mapswebsite. The Ramsar Wetlands of Australia Dataset is available under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Australia Licence. We created individual wetland polygons from the multipart Ramsar polygons in the dataset. The 6 Australian Ramsar Sites in external territories are excluded as they are outside of Australia’s satellite data footprint. What this product offers The Wetlands Insight Tool (Ramsar Wetlands) summarises how the amount of water, green vegetation, dry vegetation and bare soil varies over time within eachwetland boundary.It provides the user with the ability to compare how the wetland is behaving now with how it has behaved in the past. This allows users to identify how changes in water availability have affected the wetland.It achieves this bypresentinga combined view of Water Observations from Space (DEA Water Observations), Tasseled Cap Wetness (DEA Wetness Percentiles) and Fractional Cover (DEA Fractional Cover) measurements from the Landsat series of satellites, summarised as a stacked line plot to show how that wetlandhas changed over time.