Description

This upload describes remote-sensing derived water surface estimates for a set of sodapans and lakes in the Seewinkel region in Austria. Pannonic salt steppes and salt marshes (EUNIS code 1530) are among the rarest habitat types in Europe and typically characterized by halophytic vegetation and periodically reoccurring water surface and it is not untypical for them to fall entirely dry during the course of the year.

Here a near-daily time series of water surface area was created from pre-processed Sentinel 1 ARD data using VV polarization estimates from all ascending imageries taken between 2015 and the last updated day. The data was corrected for border-noise and despecking. Based on a calibrated threshold (obtained through visual inspection) the water surface area was then identified and extracted within the boundaries of the habitat areas. A shapefile of the extent of sodapans and lakes in the Neusiedl region has been supplied by the Nationalpark Lake Neusiedl - Seewinkel (not shared). Area estimates are in ha unless otherwise stated.

The data can be interactively navigated on a small dashboard online:
https://martinjung.shinyapps.io/lackenmonitor/ 

The creation of this data was supported by the INSPIRE project funded under the BiodivERsA BiodivProtect call.