An Inundated Wetlands Earth System Data Record: Global Monitoring of Wetland Extent and Dynamics
Kyle
McDonald, Jet Propulsion Lab, California Institute of Technology, kyle.mcdonald@jpl.nasa.gov
(Presenting)
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 are constructing 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 two complementary ESDR components are being produced:
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 spanning multiple years and derived from multiple satellite observations.
Comparison and validation of these data sets will ensure self-consistency within the ESDR.
We present progress on construction of this ESDR. We review details of the data system design and approach for wetlands classification. 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, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
Presentation Type: Poster
Poster Session: Data Records and Systems
NASA TE Funded Awards Represented:
NONE: Related Activity or Previously Funded TE Award