A national inventory maps wetlands across South Africa's provinces and drainage regions. The project uses aerial photographs at a 1:50,000 scale with a minimum mapping unit of 0.25 hectares to delineate boundaries and classify sites. SCIOPS adapted the Cowardin classification system from the U.S. National Wetland Inventory to identify wetland types for conservation and management.
Use Cases
- Identify priority conservation sites based on wetland location and classification data.
- Establish a baseline for measuring future changes in wetland area and function.
- Support planning and management decisions using geospatial wetland boundaries.
- Facilitate information sharing at local, national, and international levels using a standardized classification system.
- Assist in establishing monitoring programs for wetland ecological, social, and cultural values.
Strengths
- Mapping is based on aerial photographs, considered the most accurate form of remotely sensed data for wetland delineation.
- The classification system is a modified version of the Cowardin system, used successfully in the U.S. for almost twenty years.
- The inventory has a defined minimum mapping unit of 0.25 hectares at a 1:50,000 scale.
Limitations
- Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
- Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
- Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.
Provenance
- Source
- SCIOPS
- Collection Method
- Wetlands are identified and delineated from remotely-sensed images, primarily aerial photographs.
- Geography
- South Africa, organized by provinces and drainage regions (Limpopo-Olifants, Vaal, Orange-Namaqualand, Western Cape, Eastern Cape, Eastern Escarpment).