Remote sensing of Amazonian white-water floodplain habitats under the BONDS and SABERES projects

Amazonia's seasonally inundated white-water floodplains support high levels of biodiversity and provide fundamental services for residents but are subject to threats such as deforestation and disruption of hydrologic regimes by dams and climate change. The BONDS and SABERES projects -- consortia of researchers from Brazil, Colombia, France, Norway, Germany, the US, and the UK -- are developing scenarios of biodiversity and ecosystem services for the Solimões-Amazon and Juruá river floodplains in collaboration with floodplain communities. New remote sensing sensors and methods are being applied to map floodplain habitats and to model the interactions between biodiversity, habitat type, hydrology, and management regimes, with an emphasis on floodplain forests, fisheries, and phytoplankton. This session will highlight the advances in the application of multiple sensors: SAR (Sentinel-1, PALSAR), LiDAR (GEDI, ICESat-2, airborne), and optical (PlanetScope, Sentinel-2 and Sentinel-3). The BONDS/SABERES products will inform the participatory modelling of floodplain resource use in support of sustainable communities and development of regional fisheries management policies.