Trends in use of remotely sensed data in wetlands assessment and monitoring in Zimbabwe

Abstract

The paper assesses trends in use of earth observation data in wetland conditions monitoring and assessment in Zimbabwe from 1980 to 2019. Reviewed literature shows academia and research institutions (69.8%), government agencies (14%) and international development partners (16.3%) as the main users of remotely sensed data in wetland ecological assessments and monitoring. There is more reliance by the abovementioned stakeholders on freely available low-cost resolution imagery from Landsat (62.9%) and Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (14.3%). Other stakeholders, however, are reliant on high-resolution imagery like Rapid Eye (5.7%) and aerial photography (11.4%). Satellite images in wetland management in Zimbabwe are used for land use land cover change detection (42.1%), vegetation health monitoring (21.1%), water quantity monitoring (5.3%), water quality monitoring (13.2%) and wetland mapping (18.4%). The identified challenges faced by different stakeholders to effectively utilise EO data include high cost of high-resolution imageries, limited expertise, inadequate equipment and software. Since the cost of high-resolution satellite imagery mainly constraints the acquisition of suitable satellite data to assess the small wetlands that dominate Zimbabwe's landscape, there is need to promote use of recently launched freely available high-resolution Sentinel data to improve the ecological assessment of wetland conditions.