An Inundated Wetlands Earth System Data Record: Global Monitoring of Wetland Extent and Dynamics
Kyle
C.
McDonald, Jet Propulsion Lab, kyle.mcdonald@jpl.nasa.gov
(Presenting)
Bruce
Chapman, Jet Propulsion Lab, bruce.chapman@jpl.nasa.gov
Laura
Hess, University of California at Santa Barbara, lola@icess.ucsb.edu
Mahta
Moghaddam, The University of Michigan, mmoghadd@eecs.umich.edu
Elaine
Matthews, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, ematthews@giss.nasa.gov
John
S.
Kimball, University of Montana, johnk@ntsg.umt.edu
Catherine
Prigent, LERMA/CNRS, catherine.prigent@obspm.fr
Wetlands exert major impacts on global biogeochemistry, hydrology, and biological diversity. The extent and seasonal, interannual, and decadal variation of inundated wetland area play key roles in ecosystem dynamics. Wetlands contribute approximately one fourth of the total methane annually emitted to the atmosphere and are identified as the primary contributor to interannual variations in the growth rate of atmospheric methane concentrations. Climate change is projected to have a pronounced effect on global wetlands through alterations in hydrologic regimes, with some changes already evident. Despite the importance of these environments in the global cycling of carbon and water and to current and future climate, the extent and dynamics of global wetlands remain poorly characterized and modeled, primarily because of the scarcity of suitable regional-to-global remote-sensing data for characterizing their distribution and dynamics.
We will construct an Earth System Data Record of Inundated Wetlands (IW-ESDR) to facilitate investigations on the role of inundated wetlands in climate, biogeochemistry, hydrology, and biodiversity. We will produce two complementary ESDR components:
1) Fine-resolution (100m) maps of wetland extent, vegetation type, and seasonal inundation dynamics, derived from Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), for continental-scale areas covering crucial wetland regions.
2) Global monthly mapping of inundation extent at ~25 km resolution for the period 1992-2009, derived from multiple satellite observations.
The IW-ESDR will provide the first accurate, consistent and comprehensive global-scale data set of wetland inundation and vegetation, including continental-scale multitemporal and multi-year monthly inundation dynamics at multiple scales
This work was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, at the University of California at Santa Barbara, at The University of Michigan, at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and at the University of Montana under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
NASA Carbon Cycle & Ecosystems Active Awards Represented by this Poster: