The International Water Management Institute (IWMI) has embarked on Global wetland Mapping project (GWMP) using remote sensing and secondary data. The overarching goal of the GWMP is to map, characterize, and classify the wetlands of the world at various scales or pixel resolutions through a wide range of partnerships including the Ramsar Convention. Given the complexity and costs involved in mapping vast areas, necessity for developing methods using freely available data was identified as a top priority.

Within this context, research work was carried out to develop a methodology for mapping wetlands using freely available High-resolution Landsat ETM+ 30m Geocover and SRTM 90-m data. In our first attempts Landsat Geocover and the SRTM data, both having global coverage, were selected so the methods developed at one location can be applied elsewhere.