Remote Sensing of the Distribution and Extent of Wetlands in the Amazon Basin

Abstract

Wetlands cover extensive areas in the Amazon basin and are represented by a wide variety of plant communities including seasonally inundated forests and savannas, intermittently flooded riparian zones bordering streams and rivers, backwater swamps, coastal mangroves, palm swamps, and high-elevation bogs (Junk 1997). However, these wetlands are not well characterized, relative to their ecological importance. A major factor contributing to the difficulty of inventorying and monitoring the wetlands and their environmental functions has been the lack of means of determining their distribution and extent throughout the very large Amazon basin and the seasonal and interannual variations in their inundation and phenology.