Monitoring winter flooding of rice fields on the coastal wetland of Ebre delta with multitemporal remote sensing images

This paper presents a successful methodology for monitoring winter flooding of rice fields on the coastal wetland of Ebre delta (Catalonia, Northeast of Spain) with a multi-temporal set of Landsat images. Guaranteeing a stable flooding during fall and winter is essential for biodiversity preservation of that very important aquatic habitat of Europe. After applying a discriminant analysis to the first date, its coefficients have allowed discriminating, with an accuracy higher than 90%, eight different flooding stages into the rest of dates.