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Lookup NU author(s): Professor Bethan DaviesORCiD
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0).
We present a first global high-resolution map (30 m x 30 m) of high-altitudinal wetlands in the world’s major mountain regions, i.e. the Andes, Rocky Mountains, Alps and High Mountain Asia. To map these wetlands, we employed a supervised classification approach using a random forest machine learning model and a selected set of predictors including vegetation, topographic, and surface moisture features. The predictors were derived from freely available radar and optical satellite imagery (Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2), SRTM elevation data, and the global ecoregion map RESOLVE. We identify a total area of >30,500 km2 of high-mountain wetlands. With this map we aim to enhance the understanding of wetland distribution in remote and often inaccessible mountain regions and enable a more reliable understanding of their role in the ecosystem functioning and water cycles of high mountain areas.
Author(s): Becker R, Kropacek J, Ross AC, Gribbin T, Drenkhan F, Hernandez Sotelo L, Mendoza M, Davies BJ, Ely J, Buytaert W
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Scientific Data
Year: 2026
Volume: 13
Print publication date: 27/04/2026
Online publication date: 11/03/2026
Acceptance date: 03/03/2026
Date deposited: 08/06/2026
ISSN (electronic): 2052-4463
Publisher: Nature
URL: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-026-07020-w
DOI: 10.1038/s41597-026-07020-w
Data Access Statement: Data availability The maps and the code for the classification procedure are stored in a data repository on Zenodo and can freely be downloaded from: https://zenodo.org/records/18339573 The code used to generate and validate the wetland maps is made publicly available under: https://zenodo.org/ records/18339573.
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