Remote Sensing for the Study of the Changes in Wetlands

Dear Colleagues,

Wetlands are important and valuable ecosystems, providing a range of ecosystem services that are considered critical buffers against climate change, yet they remain threatened worldwide (IPBES, 2019). Among estuarine and freshwater inland wetlands, coastal wetlands along the transition zone between the freshwater and estuarine realms represent very interesting areas for this Remote Sensing Special Issue (SI). The coastline is a high-stakes, vulnerable area, and contains coastal wetlands under pressure from both anthropogenic and climate change stresses. The Ramsar Convention (Ramsar Convention Secretariat 2022) considers mangroves, salt marshes, seagrass beds, coral reefs, beaches, estuaries, and coastal water bodies less than 6 m deep to be coastal wetlands. In addition, other forested wetlands such as floodplain and riverine and swamp forests are freshwater habitats interspersed or fringing estuarine habitats. These coastal wetlands represent a wealth of valuable, but highly fragile ecosystems, yet despite the essential ecosystem services they provide they remain threatened with increasing degradation, risking their persistence (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005). On the current time scale, tidal wetlands are biologically productive ecosystems with high biodiversity, providing multiple benefits to the ecosystem; however, the advantages of these wetlands are not fully recognized or even precisely known. We know that these wetlands are an important contributing factor in mitigating the impact of floods, delaying the effects of drought, but they also facilitate biological production for fishing and shellfish farming, create reservoirs of biodiversity, improve water quality, regulate the water cycle, store carbon in the mangrove soil, and maintain green areas at the periphery of urban areas.

Earth observation plays a critical role in informing changes to the extent, integrity and connectivity of these wetlands, of which targets for measuring these changes are currently in discussion for Goal A of the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework of the Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD, 2021). In addition, Earth observation is key to the monitoring of essential biodiversity variables, such as changes in composition, integrity and structure (Turak et al., 2017). Since no global monitoring system is in place for reporting on changes in coastal wetlands to the CBD or the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), this SI is focused on providing evidence from Earth observation technologies to quantify changes in coastal ecosystems for global reporting to targets. One of the major challenges is to distinguish natural dynamics in these systems from artificial and climate change impacts.

For this SI we invite you to submit your research on the use of Earth observation technologies to respond to the challenge of quantifying changes in wetlands for global reporting, including estuarine, coastal and freshwater wetlands.

References

• CBD (Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity. (2021). First draft of the post-2020 global biodiversity framework. Available at: https://www.cbd.int/doc/c/abb5/591f/2e46096d3f0330b08ce87a45/wg2020-03-03-en.pdf.
• Turak, E. et al., (2017). Essential Biodiversity Variables for measuring change in global freshwater biodiversity. Biological Conservation, 213(Part B): 272–279. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2016.09.005.

Prof. Dr. Simona Niculescu
Dr. Heidi Van Deventer
Prof. Dr. Dar Roberts
Dr. Junshi Xia
Guest Editors

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