Tracking disturbance and inundation to identify wetland loss

Global trends in wetland degradation and loss have created an urgency to monitor wetland extent, as well as track the distribution and causes of wetland loss. Satellite imagery can be used to monitor wetlands over time, but few efforts have attempted to distinguish anthropogenic wetland loss from climate-driven variability in wetland extent. We present an approach to concurrently track land cover disturbance and inundation extent across the Mid-Atlantic region, United States, using the Landsat archive in Google Earth Engine. Disturbance was identified as a change in greenness, using a harmonic linear regression approach, or as a change in growing season brightness. Inundation extent was mapped using a modified version...

Tags: Chesapeake Bay, Delaware, Delmarva Peninsula, Ecology, Hydrology, All tags... Land Use Change, Landsat, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Remote Sensing, USGS Science Data Catalog (SDC), Virginia, Washington, D.C., Water Resources, West Virginia, harmonic regression, permit, surface water, wetland fill, Fewer tags