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Boreal Wetland Mapping by UAV to Upscale Greenhouse Gas Emissions
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  • Ethan Kyzivat,
  • Laurence Smith,
  • Colin Gleason,
  • Tamlin Pavelsky,
  • Theodore Langhorst,
  • Jessica Fayne,
  • Catherine Kuhn,
  • Merritt Harlan,
  • Yuta Ishitsuka,
  • Dongmei Feng,
  • Robert Striegl,
  • Kimberly Wickland,
  • Mark Dornblaser,
  • David Butman,
  • Fenix Garcia-Tigreros
Ethan Kyzivat
Brown University

Corresponding Author:ethan_kyzivat@brown.edu

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Laurence Smith
Brown University
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Colin Gleason
University of Massachusetts
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Tamlin Pavelsky
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
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Theodore Langhorst
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
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Jessica Fayne
University of California Los Angeles
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Catherine Kuhn
University of Washington Seattle Campus
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Merritt Harlan
UMass-Amherst
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Yuta Ishitsuka
University of Massachusetts Amherst
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Dongmei Feng
University of Massachusetts Amherst
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Robert Striegl
USGS WRD
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Kimberly Wickland
US Geological Survey
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Mark Dornblaser
US Geological Survey
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David Butman
University of Washington
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Fenix Garcia-Tigreros
University of Washington
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Abstract

Wetlands are the largest environmental sources of methane, and interannual changes in wetland methane fluxes explain most of the variability in the global flux. Despite their importance, global wetland maps, a key component of methane models, are inaccurate for at least three reasons: (1) Their temporal variability is poorly suited for static maps; (2) Optical remote sensing cannot penetrate foliage, making water hard to identify; and (3) satellites cannot resolve their fine-scale features. Furthermore, small, unmapped water bodies may emit methane disproportionately to their size due their shallow depths inhibiting bacterial oxidation from the water column and their large perimeter: volume ratios, which introduce the potential for organic matter input and plant-mediated fluxes from shorelines. However, in boreal regions, there is conflicting evidence on the effects of water body size on methane and carbon dioxide fluxes. Here, we measure methane emissions in lakes and wetlands in an Arctic-Boreal delta and compare to open water and vegetated area with the goal of improving methane emission estimates in this region. We expect small, shallow, and vegetated wetlands to produce more methane than those bordering deeper lakes. To test this hypothesis, we map wetlands in the Peace-Athabasca Delta, a 5,000 km2 inland delta in northern Alberta, Canada containing abundant open and vegetated wetlands. We use airborne remote sensing from three sources: (1) High-resolution (<5 cm pixel) unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) imagery, (2) Coincident L-band synthetic aperture radar (SAR) from NASA’s UAVSAR airborne imaging system, and (3) 2017 AirSWOT Ka-band interferometric SAR with color-infrared imagery. With a wavelength of 23.8 cm, UAVSAR L-band returns are ideal for mapping vegetated wetlands due to double-bounce backscatter between vegetation and the water surface. Combining two field campaigns of flux chamber gas sampling from over twenty lakes, walked shoreline surveys, and over 70 thousand UAV photos, we present a collection of wetland maps and a methodology for efficiently mapping them from UAV. We then upscale methane and carbon dioxide emissions to the scale of the delta and compare to existing estimates. These results will help improve greenhouse gas emission estimates for boreal zone wetlands.