Optical and radar satellital data for mapping and monitoring wetland macrosystems

MERCEDES SALVIA; HAYDEE KARSZENBAUM; PATRICIA KANDUS; FRANCISCO MATIAS GRINGS

Revista Española de Teledeteccion

Asociación Española de Teledetección

Año: 2009 vol. 31 p. 35 - 51

1988-8740

The Paraná River Delta region (Argentina) is a macrosystem of wetlands that stretches through the final 300 km of the Paraná Basin. With the aim of identifying different types of wetland and the extent of the latest flooding in the region, data from two medium resolution satellite systems, the Argentinean SACC MMRS (Multispectral Medium Resolution Scanner) in the optical range and the European ESA ENVISAT ASAR (Advanced Synthetic Aperture RADAR) WSM (Wide Swath Mode) in the microwave range, were used. Progressive unsupervised classifications on the optical images and image differences on SAR images were used to obtain thematic maps. As a result, we obtained the first map of dominant physognomic vegetation types for the whole region, and a map of the latest El Niño flooding (2007).