Mapping of West Siberian taiga wetland complexes using Landsat imagery: implications for methane emissions

• Main Authors: Glagolev, Michael V., Lapshina, Elena D., Sabrekov, Alexander F., Maksyutov, Shamil Sh., Terentieva, Irina Evgenievna
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: 2016
• Subjects: водно-болотные угодья; Западная Сибирь; парниковые газы; карты; использование спутниковых фотоснимков; palsa; taiga; Siberia
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.5194/bgd-12-20149-2015; http://vital.lib.tsu.ru/vital/access/manager/Repository/vtls:000657206

High latitude wetlands are important for understanding climate change risks because these environments sink carbon and emit methane. Fine scale heterogeneity of wetland landscapes pose challenges for producing the greenhouse gas flux inventories based on point observations. To reduce uncertainties at the regional scale we mapped wetlands and water bodies in the taiga zone of West Siberia on a scene-by-scene basis using a supervised classification of Landsat imagery. The training dataset was based on high-resolution images and field data that were collected at 28 test areas. Classification scheme was aimed at methane inventory applications and included 7 wetland ecosystem types composing 9 wetland complexes in different proportions. Accuracy assessment based on 1082 validation polygons of 10 × 10 pixels indicated an overall map accuracy of 79 %. The total area of the wetlands and water bodies was estimated to be 52.4 Mha or 4-12 % of the global wetland area. Ridge-hollow complexes prevail in WS's taiga occupying 33 % of the domain followed by forested bogs or "ryams" (23 %) ridge-hollow-lake complexes (16 %) open fens (8 %) palsa complexes (7 %) open bogs (5 %) patterned fens (4 %) and swamps (4 %). Various oligotrophic environments are dominant among the wetland ecosystems while fens cover only 14 % of the area. Because of the significant update in the wetland ecosystem coverage a considerable revaluation of the total CH4 emissions from the entire region is expected. A new Landsat-based map of WS's taiga wetlands provides a benchmark for validation of coarse-resolution global land cover products and wetland datasets in high latitudes.