A basin-scale inventory and hydrodynamics of floodplain wetlands based on time-series of remote sensing data

The world is rapidly losing its wetlands. To contain the loss, the firstand foremost requirement is to prepare an inventory of wetlandsbased on historical datasets. Individual wetlands in a catchmentsystem are not standalone entitites, and together, they control thehydrological processes of the catchment. Therefore, it is essential tomap the wetlands at the catchment scale to understand theirrelationship with the adjoining water bodies. This will further helpto develop sustainable strategies for their revival and management.In the present work, we have formulated a simple yet robustmethod to (a) map the wetlands and (b) document surfacedynamics of wetlands by applying pixel-scale binary logic (wet/not-wet) to the time-series Landsat dataset. We have applied thismethod to a large basin in the Ganga Plains and mapped a totalof 3226 wetlands in the basin. The method can also be applied tomap wetlands at a pixel scale to a basin scale.