This layer maps the extent and type of wetlands and inland water bodies, highlighting biodiversity hotspots and carbon sinks such as lakes, reservoirs, rivers, freshwater marshes, swamp and flooded forests, coastal and saline wetlands, and peatlands (bogs, fens and mires). It is derived from the Resource Watch global wetlands dataset (wat_039), a GLWD-3 based classification with 11 categories, at roughly 30 m resolution. Each colour identifies a distinct wetland class; areas that are not wetland are shown as transparent.
The layer shows the distribution of wetlands and inland water bodies, a categorical (discrete) classification with 11 wetland types derived from the GLWD-3 scheme: (1) lakes, (2) reservoirs, (3) rivers, (4) freshwater marsh and floodplain, (5) swamp and flooded forest, (6) coastal wetland, (7) pan/brackish/saline wetland, (8) bog, fen and mire (peatland), (9) intermittent wetland/lake, (10) 50-100% wetland, and (11) 25-50% wetland. These classes identify biodiversity hotspots and carbon sinks.
| Code | Provider | Resolution | Year |
|---|---|---|---|
| WRD_WAT039_01 | Resource Watch (WRI) | 30 m | 2018 |
Method: The single band of the Google Earth Engine asset projects/resource-watch-gee/wat_039_rw0_wetlands is clipped to the area of interest and resampled to a 30 m grid. The categorical values are rendered with an 11-colour palette; nodata and non-wetland pixels are masked as transparent. For large areas the image is split into quadrants, downloaded in parallel and merged with a nearest-neighbour, maximum-value algorithm.