The European Space Agency, in collaboration with the Ramsar Convention Secretariat, created GlobWetland products and services. This offering uses satellite imagery to provide detailed wide-area views of individual wetlands. GlobWetland has been designed based on the specific requests of wetland managers across 50 sites in 21 countries worldwide.

The satellite products include base maps, land use-land cover maps and change detection maps – with historical earth observation satellite images being compared with current acquisitions to see what changes have occurred throughout the last 10 years or more.

Integrating the products and services into the manager’s traditional working procedures will require training to secure competence with the procedures.

Successful use of the GlobWetland will be especially important in Africa where the lack of updated geo information and the inefficient monitoring networks have thwarted previous conservation efforts.

To date, participants from Algeria, Egypt, Lake Chad, Senegal, South Africa and Kenya have attended training sessions, which included lectures, hands-on work with sample products as well as fieldwork.

“The training has been really stimulating,” Garba Sambo Hassan, remote sensing officer for the Lake Chad Basin Commission, said in a statement. “I used to perform these tasks manually, which is tedious and cumbersome. I am now anxious to get back to the office and use these products to update my past work.”

The seminar also serves as a criteria assessment opportunity, where users can discuss their requirements, suggest new tools and identify inefficiencies.

The Ramar Convention on Wetlands was put in place in response to the growing understanding of the critical importance of the Earth’s wetlands. Abundant wetlands make for the most biologically diverse ecosystems on Earth – even more productive than tropical rainforests. Wetlands are scattered across the globe, providing regional flood and erosion prevention, water purification and nutrient recycling.

For much of the 20th century, wetlands were drained or otherwise degraded. Today more than 1,424 wetlands – a total area of 129 million hectares – have been designated as Wetlands of International Importance.

The Ramsar Convention’s 145 national signatories have committed to maintaining the ecological character and are obliged to report on the state of listed wetlands they have designated.