Use of Landsat images to create national wetland lists and organise a MedWet database archive: The Albanian Wetland Inventory case

摘要

National wetland lists can be created using spatial data from various sources like topographic maps, air photos, satellite images, lists from local authorities, expert’s knowledge etc. Applying appropriate algorithms and methods on satellite images from Landsat is a relative easy and cost effective approach in collecting spatial data for the water bodies. This can be used as a base layer of information and can be crosschecked and verified using ground truth data or other sources of information. Despite some problems in satellite image analysis (e.g. Cloud or snow coverage), the method gives accurate and reliable results and is also very effective for large areas like countries or prefectures. The method was successfully used to compose the national wetland inventory for Albania in 2000. The same method will be used for the national wetland inventory of Cyprus and Serbia.